To See You Again
by Quill of Molliemon
Summary: AU-ish, pre-Naruto/Kakashi Gaiden-ish, and spoilers about Naruto's origins, yay! ...When last they met, he didn't even know that she was a "she." Now fate has brought them back together, and she's gonna rock his world...again. MinaKushi
1. Uzumaki kun?

**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own the anime/manga Naruto! …So please don't sue.

Title: To See You Again...  
Time-line: AU (because no one knows how they met!) pre-Naruto, Kakashi-Gaiden-ish  
Genre: Humor/Romance/(light) Angst  
Rating: PG-13

Beware of **SPOILERS**!

Please enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 1:**_ Uzumaki-kun?_

When she first met him, they were twelve.

Her genin team was one of the lucky few chosen teams to travel to Konohagakure no Sato for a few months of training. Ever since the founding of the Leaf Village, the Whirlpool Village had been their little ally. And to cement their ties, every year for a few months little genin teams would be swapped for a while. One year a squad from Leaf would come to Whirlpool, and the next it would be reversed.

She'd barely been in the giant ninja village in Fire Country more than ten minutes when she bumped into him…literally. It might've been her fault—she was a stranger there, got lost easily (especially back then), and really shouldn't have been running so fast—but he didn't have to bite her head off the way that he did. After taking in his clear blue eyes, spiky yellow-blonde hair, and prissy-polite attitude, she cussed him out and left him eating her dust.

Later, when she and her comrades were formally introduced to the genin their age, she learned his name: Namikaze Minato. He didn't come from a long line of ninja like many of his classmates did, but he seemed popular enough. A lot of the others appeared rather jealous of him on account that he had a famous teacher. She wasn't sure what to make of his teacher—the white-haired Jiraiya—until a little time later when she spotted him near the hot springs peeping on the women's side…whereupon she decided that he was a pervert, and her shaky opinion of the Namikaze dipped lower.

He seemed to think that he was "all that" and everyone around him apparently agreed. Talented, they said; a potential genius, they said. She didn't see what was so great about him.

When he gave a demonstration of his skills, she saw that maybe—_just maybe_—there was something to all their talk. It was just a practice spar, but no one from Whirlpool could touch him. Heck, his _friends_ could barely touch him! He was just so damn fast and clever! No little genin had any right to be that fast. His teacher boasted that "his Minato" would make chuunin in no time.

She scoffed at such claims, but secretly agreed.

What followed was a fiercely rivalry—at least on her part. Their first encounter had been on the wrong foot, and the rest of their acquaintanceship went the same way. She challenged him to fights; he beat her every time (although she did always manage to make him bleed a little). She put everything she had into whatever training exercise or D-ranked mission she was given and did her absolute best, but he always seemed to do better with half the effort. The only thing she seemed to out-do him in was in insults; he was just too polite and plain inexperienced to properly insult anyone or come up with a half-way decent come-back.

At first when he started calling her "Uzumaki-kun" instead of "Uzumaki-san" she thought that he was finally picking up the art of the insult. Sure she looked like a boy; she was a tomboy, she wore baggy boy's clothes, she acted like a boy, she was scrawny and underdeveloped, and she wore her blood-red hair chin-length and un-styled. There wasn't anything remotely feminine about her. So really, calling her "Uzumaki-kun" made perfect sense as an insult. It was pretty good; nice and subtle.

But then she did an unforgivably girly thing: She contracted a little crush on the prissy Namikaze.

Her squad and his squad were on a little joint C-rank escort mission. They had to guard a little group of traveling merchants through an area of Fire Country that had suffered a lot of bandit activity. It should've been a walk in the park for six little genin. Their instructors had thought so—neither jounin had gone along.

It hadn't been a walk in the park. There were a lot of bandits. They overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. And she got careless and clumsy and twisted her ankle, and for a few moments was dangerously vulnerable.

Namikaze had been nearby, noticed her distress, and came to her defense. One moment she was alone, staring down an ugly bandit with a rusty sword, ready to slash at her, and the next he was between them blocking the nasty blade with a kunai. He held up against the older, bigger man, then brushed aside his sword and took him down with a quick, calculated blow.

She stared up at him in startled awe. The stern, determined look on his face was so much more awesome than his usual superior little grin that he wore when training. And in that brief moment, that fraction of a second, she saw him as a handsome boy.

Then he flickered away to deal with someone else and the little "moment" was over. Rattled and a little lame, she stumbled to her feet and managed to take out one more bandit in spite of her ankle before it was all over. And then the fight was over, the remaining bandits dispersed in a panic, one of her teammates taped her ankle, and they limped along to their destination.

Afterwards, at the most inopportune times, she'd feel funny around him. If she had something attention-consuming to do, it wasn't so bad, but when she was just mindlessly training in the same general area as him it drove her nuts. She'd feel kinda warm and tingly, and there'd be weird fluttery feelings inside her stomach, and she could never look at him when he was looking at her, or talk quite right when she was trying to speak with him (thankfully she could insult him just fine).

It was an entirely new, entirely horrible experience for her. She hated every second of feeling weird around him. Worse, she started to feel this sick longing for his attention—for him to look at her as a girl instead of as one of the boys. And as a result of all this awful turmoil, she lashed out at him more than ever.

When the six weeks were finally up and it was time to return home to Whirlpool, Namikaze was unfortunately there to see her off. It was made more humiliating because her teammates were starting to suspect her shameful secret crush on the Konoha genin. And of course he just had to say good-bye to her in particular.

_"I'm really sorry that we never really saw eye-to-eye, Uzumaki-kun,"_ he'd apologized, only partly sounding forced. _"I'm sorry that we couldn't be friends. You seem like a pretty cool guy…when you're not swearing left and right. With your determination I'm sure that you'll be a great shinobi one day."_

And it was then that she realized that he _hadn't_ been insulting her all this time. While his tone was a little stiff, he was being very sincere in the things he was telling her; there was no sarcasm at all in his voice. He had honest-to-god thought that she was a _boy_…

She had grabbed him by his shirt collar with her left hand, cocked back her right, and smashed her fist into his nose so hard he fell down on his butt and his nose started to bleed.

_"You moronic, blonde, pretty-boy!"_ she had howled. _"I'm a __**girl**__ damn it!"_

Her teammates had almost sobbed with laughter. And normally she would've been snickering along with them. It had always been funny to be mistaken for a boy before; she'd always been proud of it—proud not to be a sissy girly-girl. But she was just too upset and hurt that the first boy that she thought was cute (not that she _wanted _to think of him that way) had thought that she was a _boy_.

With one final glare at her nemesis (and unfortunate object of her unwilling affections) she had spun on her heel and marched off towards home. The rest of her little group caught up with her, still laughing hysterically. All of them were boys too; she was the only kunoichi from Whirlpool that had come (which probably made it worse, Namikaze had probably just assumed that they were all boys with no obvious girl present).

She, Uzumaki Kushina, had wanted to loathe Namikaze, and not just because of her stupid little crush. But once her fiery temper had cooled—after about the third day of traveling—she couldn't help but understand why. She didn't look like a girl, dress like one, talk like one, act like one, or anything. She even preferred to go by "Uzumaki" as "Kushina" was just so…_girly_. No wonder the genius (_keh, some genius!_) Namikaze had been so fooled.

And so—quite against her will—a tiny flicker of her stupid, stupid crush persisted. It flared up briefly every now and then when some word or rumor of how awesome Namikaze was reached her ear, but it grew easier and easier to suppress. The years and miles of distance made it easier, she supposed.

She wasn't a little tomboy anymore; she was a rough-edged kunoichi that had just made jounin (so what if it was by the skin of her teeth, it still counted!). Her red hair had grown out a lot since her visit to Konoha. In fact, partly to avoid _any_ confusion on her gender in the future, she made sure to grow it down almost to her butt. No _boy _had hair that long. And her femininity was finally more apparent when she finally seemed to hit full puberty at fifteen and grew some (small) breasts. She wore tighter, more revealing clothes to make sure that everyone could see. Heck, if it wasn't for her aggressive nature and one-of-the-boys behavior, she could easily be mistaken for a girly-girl at first glance.

At least that's what some of her guy friends told her. She didn't believe them. She just never _felt_ terribly feminine. Sure, she could fake it pretty good. She had to, being a kunoichi and all. A few times she'd drawn "seduction missions" where she'd had to rely on "womanly charms" to pull it off properly.

The only time where she'd ever felt like a girl (emotionally—biologically her menstrual cycle was more than enough to remind her of her female-ness) was when she suffered from her little infatuation with Namikaze. It was a sensation that she ruthlessly quashed. Even if he—by some freakish miracle—found her _remotely_ attractive and somehow returned her feelings, it would never work. He was of the Leaf, and she of the Whirlpool. Allies, yes; but different villages several days' travel apart. She'd never give up her home and she knew that neither would he.

And then there was her career. If she got involved with him—or any man, for that matter—there was the risk of babies. She didn't know how to handle babies. She didn't _want _to know how to handle babies. Babies meant no more being a kunoichi. Babies meant being a mother and a…ugh…_housewife_.

No, none of that was for her. It also saved her the trouble of heartbreak and rejection. If she didn't chase after boys, she could train more, further her career, and not get her soft emotional underbelly mangled.

It was a win-win situation all around, really.

But now was not the time to be reminiscing and rationalizing her life choices. Now was a good time to keep her mind on the job. War was raging, and Iwa (_the filthy bastards!_) had just smashed her home village to pieces. Whirlpool was no more, and soon the surviving ninja would be just as dead.

_Just finish this little seduction/assassination and then get to Konoha,_ she thought. _I can't get back at Iwa by myself, but if I join up with Konoha I can get a little taste of vengeance with a chance of surviving. Those rock-brained bastards haven't seen the last of the Uzumaki! Not yet…_

Eying her reflection critically in the inn room mirror, she cautiously adjusted her lipstick. If only one of her kunoichi allies (not friends, just a few female ninja that could stand her enough to help her with female things) were around to do her make-up. Kushina knew the basics, but she needed to look awesome and not-herself.

So far she'd put on a few scraps of cloth that was _supposed_ to be a dress and some short heels. She'd dyed her hair black (with the cheap stuff that washed right out after a few showers) to avoid being identified by her distinctive red hair. And now it was the finishing touches on the face…

"Good enough," she muttered and put her make-up (used for mission purposes only!) back in her bag with the rest of her regular ninja gear.

Checking her concealed weapons (a pair of senbon needles in her hair as hair sticks, a few shuriken tucked in the inside hem of her wide sleeves, and a kunai and a slightly longer knife strapped to one leg underneath her skirt) she grabbed a vial of poison powder. Palming the vial so that she could hide it and release it without being caught, she glanced at her reflection one last time before leaving. She hesitated at the top of the stairs to steel herself and put in place her "seductive" mask before continuing on down to the tavern part of the inn…and her target.

The inn was located on what had been the border between Whirlpool County and Earth Country; it was also close to Rain Country—the unfortunate nexus between all five of the Great Shinobi Nations. The tavern contained several Iwa-nin along with a good number of civilians. Hopefully she could poison the Iwa squad and get out before things exploded.

It was smoky and loud and smelled like sweat, booze, and puke in the tavern, but she blocked it out. She was a flirty little slut out to romance some handsome bad-ass ninja. And nothing was going to get in her way.

Kushina slipped through the crowd with cat-like grace, her green-tinged blue eyes scanning the rough crowd for her targets. She spied them in a particularly dark and smoky corner and smirked. Just as she was lazily making her way to them (she couldn't go after them directly, they'd be suspicious) a tiny flash of bright color off to the side caught her attention.

A cloaked and hooded man had just come in from the rain. Peeking out from the shadows of his hood were a few spikes of bright yellow hair. It was a very distinctive shade; it reminded her of—

_No._ Her blood ran cold. _**He**__ can't be here! If they catch him, more Iwa-nin will come and it'll be such a mess—I'll never get away! Damn it…_

Carefully masking her momentary distress, she changed direction to get closer to the mystery man. For the moment he seemed to escape the notice of the other patrons, but that couldn't last too much longer. If he was who she thought he was, he would be outed quickly. Namikaze Minato was just too famous—or infamous—now to be anonymous anywhere for long.

Just as he slid into a shadowy booth at the side of the room, she reached his little table. Putting on her best sultry smile (which probably sucked, but most losers fell for it long enough for her to work) she leaned against the table with her hip and peered down at his shadowed face. He glanced up at her warily—but he didn't seem overly worried, the cocky bastard—and she was almost one hundred percent sure of his identity.

"Minato-kun," she purred, and carefully judged his reaction. The brief widening of his eyes in surprise and the tightening of his jaw was all she needed to see. She shifted closer and leaned down further on the pretext of flashing him some of her (pathetic) cleavage. "You shouldn't be here, Minato-kun. There's a four-man squad of high-ranking Iwa jounin here, and more are likely to show up soon."

"So," he shrugged, and she had to fight the urge to shiver at his deeper, more mature voice. "I can take them."

_Hold it together!_ "And the ones that come after?" she murmured and edged closer.

"Them too," he grinned faintly.

"I suppose you could, if you want to make a big ugly mess," she shrugged and slipped into the booth beside him. "And normally I'd be all for that. But I'd like to get out of here with my luggage and without a giant pack of hunter-nin chasing me the whole way." She rested her elbows on the table and propped her chin on her fist. "I was just going to poison them and then sneak out the back. Not as satisfying, but cleaner."

He studied her curiously. "Who are you?"

Kushina contemplated answering him. If he remembered her at all, and believed her when she revealed her name, he could react badly even though he was definitely jounin-level by now. But if she made something up, would he play along with her plan and allow her to go for Konoha?

_We didn't really part on the best of terms, and I'd rather not have to argue with him._ She tapped her chin thoughtfully, doing her best to keep up her flirtatious façade for any watchers keeping tabs on her. _I'll see if I can get away with being anonymous…for now._

"Nobody special, just a straggling ally." She tugged at a loose strand of dyed hair. "If you're going to even play at anything undercover, you should use hair dye. Even under that hood it kind of glows."

"So that's how you noticed me, is it?" he sighed, still smiling.

"Mm-hm," she grinned. "So should I go ahead with my poisonous little plot, or should I sneak away before you tear this place apart?"

He leaned back in his seat, deeper into the shadows, and weighed his options. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. There was still a grin on his face, but his blue eyes were cold and calculating. She played with the cuff of his sleeve while she waited, playing up the shallow flirty slut mask she'd donned. When he made up his mind, he leaned forward again.

"Can I have your room key?"

She didn't hesitate. There wasn't anything in her meager belongings that she thought he'd take offense too, or that she'd be embarrassed of him seeing. Her ID papers were well hidden, so her little ruse was in little danger of being exposed. So with a broad, crooked grin, she slipped her room key from the folds of her skirt and whispered the room number.

As he slipped away to her cheap little room, she reoriented herself on her primary targets. Thankfully no new Iwa-nin had arrived; it was still just the four. It'd be tricky, but she intended to get at least one, and with her slow-acting poison maybe she could get all of them before they felt any effects…

* * *

Perhaps it was the high they were on from crushing Whirlpool. Or maybe they were just careless and drank a little too much sake. Whatever the reason, it had been ridiculously easy to spike their drinks with the powder.

That made her nervous.

Keeping up her little act, she made some excuse about fetching another pretty friend from upstairs to join in the fun. The Iwa-nin were greedy pigs and eagerly sent her off with the empty promise of hurrying back soon. Kushina gave them one last little wave as she vanished upstairs…and then shed her mask as she picked up the pace back to her room.

As she suspected, she found Namikaze going through her small pack. There was a war going on and information was precious, whether it be on an enemy or an ally. Closing the door behind her, she noted that he was studying her hitae-ate in the moonlight that streamed in through the single, small window.

"A Whirlpool kunoichi, eh?"

"That's right," she answered shortly, no longer bothering with her flirty false persona. "That was too easy," she muttered, glaring darkly in the general direction of the tavern. "I'm lucky, but I doubt I'm that lucky. I'm getting out of here, if you don't mind?"

"Where will you go?" he asked, lowering his hood so that she could see his face a little better in the poor light.

"I was planning on heading to Konoha," she replied and snatched her things from him. She swapped out her heels for her usual sandals, but changed nothing else. The dress-thing was revealing and all, but she could still run in it well enough. "Is that a problem?"

"It shouldn't be if you have peaceful intentions." He shrugged. "Tell me your name and I can write you a note that should make things easier."

"I'm not giving you my name until I get settled somewhere," she answered and slung her pack over her shoulder. Kushina slapped down some money and the room key on the table—her quick check-out—and headed for the window and the rainy outdoors. "Now if you'll excuse me—"

"Wait!" His arm blocked her way and she had no real choice but to stop. "I can get you out of here faster, but in return I'd like a favor."

She gave him a wary sidelong glance. "What sort of favor?"

He shifted about, suddenly nervous, for a moment. "Go on a date with me?" he blurted out finally.

Kushina stumbled backwards a few steps in shock. "W-what?!" Her mind skittered in a thousand different directions, which all ended up nowhere. "_Why_?"

"It'd just be a one-time thing, I swear!" he hurriedly assured her, scratching at the back of his head and grinning weakly in embarrassment. "It's just…my friends won't stop teasing me about getting a girlfriend. So I was thinking if I took a girl out once, they'd shut up for a while."

It took several minutes for her rattled brain to make sense of this. "Why not ask some local girl?"

"All the girls that I know well enough to ask are already in relationships," he sighed. "And anyone else who would be interested would want something long-term. You're a kunoichi, a professional. It would be just like doing a job. I'll pay for everything; you just have to play the part."

The increasingly loud noises from downstairs helped her make her decision. "Let me pick the restaurant and we have a deal."

"Done!" he agreed with a broad smile. He grabbed her arms and winked. "Hold on!"

Then it felt like she was flying, falling, being twisted inside-out, hung upside-down, and spun in circles. The dreary inn room was suddenly a dark forest. And there was no rain.

"What the hell!" Kushina choked, dizzy and reeling. "What was that?"

"That was my _Hiraishin no Jutsu_," he declared proudly. "I invented it myself. Welcome to the borders of the Land of Fire."

"Huh?" She glanced around, dazed. "Really?"

"Really," he smiled smugly. "Konoha is about four days that way," he gestured with his arm. "I have to get back to my mission, so I'll see you there!"

And then there was a flash of yellow light and he was gone.

Kushina swayed and then her rubbery legs gave out beneath her. Her "mission" was over and for the moment she was alone and could afford to let her mind wander or panic as it liked. And it chose to panic.

_Namikaze Minato asked __**me**__ on a __**date**__! Oh god he looks so much more handsome now! That jutsu—so that's why they call him Konoha's Yellow Flash! What will he do when he finds out that I was the girl who he thought was a boy and punched him in the nose for it? Oh what am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?!_

Clenching her teeth, she lightly smacked herself and took a few deep breaths.

_Pull it together Uzumaki Kushina! Focus! You can use this! You can bum a free meal off him…it'll be like an apology he doesn't know he's making! And you can get over your stupid crush on him too!_

That made her feel better.

Mind whirling with half-formed plans, she got up and started walking in the indicated direction. It would be nice to see Konoha again. The village was so much bigger than hers was…had been (_don't think about it, don't think about it, don't—_). And it was so pretty! The weather was usually nice; it didn't rain half as much as did back home (_don't think—_). Unfortunately it was quite landlocked, but no place was perfect.

_Hopefully the Hokage will remember me... And remember some good things about me. That will make things a lot easier._

She pulled the senbon needles from her hair and let the long, dyed strands fall loose down her back. By the time she tracked down Namikaze for their "date" she planned on her hair being back to its usual shade of bright red. And she'd dress as a ninja. He wanted a professional and she wasn't about to waste her badly depleted funds on a dress (the dress she was currently wearing she planned to burn).

_I will drain his wallet,_ she gloated, _and all the debts between us will be settled. I'll screw with him, get over him once and for all, and then I'll be free! Free in beautiful Konoha to start over and get some payback on Iwa and the Land of Earth!_

She threw back her head and cackled at the night sky.

_Uzumaki Kushina, you are awesome!_


	2. Uzumaki's Revenge

**  
Chapter 2:** _Uzumaki's Revenge!_

Namikaze Minato shifted anxiously as he waited outside a bar for his friends to join him. He'd made it back safely from his scouting mission in the recently defeated Whirlpool Country (which was now officially annexed by Earth Country) almost two weeks ago and he still hadn't gone on his "date." And it was probably his own fault.

When he made his little deal, he hadn't set a date or a meeting place or anything with her. He didn't even know her name! Perhaps she'd lied about going to Konoha and planned on going somewhere else and just conned him out of a free ride to the Land of Fire. Minato was an excellent shinobi, but when it came to social, non-shinobi things, he knew he was severely lacking.

His whole life was dedicated towards being the best shinobi that he could be, to achieving his goal of becoming Hokage. He never chased after girls, he never spent any time with them unless they were kunoichi and he was training or performing a mission with them. He had no time to waste on figuring out females, crawling bars, or trying out sex. He happily left that sort of thing to his friends.

Quite against his will, he'd been talked into having lunch with some of his slightly older jounin friends at the bar where he was currently waiting. The Ino-Shika-Cho trio wanted to swap stories and they had called up everyone they knew well enough in the village for the little get-together. Minato knew that his sensei would show up for sure, as would Inoichi, Shikaku, and Choza (they'd set it up after all), but the rest of the party was a mystery to him.

Just as Minato was ready to slip off and get lunch elsewhere, the organizing trio appeared. Yamanaka Inoichi swaggered along in the lead, his long blonde hair up in a high ponytail. Akimichi Choza was munching on some dango sticks he'd picked up from a stand on the way and cheerfully nodding to whatever Inoichi was saying. And Nara Shikaku brought up the rear, looking half-asleep as always.

"Ah, Minato!" Inoichi waved. "You made it!"

Minato shrugged. "Jiraiya-sensei is always asking me to take a break some time and enjoy life so I figured that I'd give it a try."

"Ah ha! Excellent!" Inoichi clapped. "We'll take good care of you!"

"Why did you say to meet at a bar?" Minato asked curiously.

"Swapping stories is always better with sake," Shikaku shrugged. "Much less troublesome."

Minato frowned. "But it's barely noon. It's much too early to drink."

The three men stared at him, then burst out laughing.

"Did I say something funny?" Minato asked when they quieted down some.

"You're such a good boy," Inoichi snickered. "Have you ever goofed off or been naughty at any point in your life?"

Minato shifted uncomfortably. "I…"

"No he hasn't!" Jiraiya declared, arriving on the scene in a puff of white smoke. "He's an excellent student, but a terrible partier. I bet the last shindig he went to was some neighbor kid's birthday party back when he was in the Academy."

"Is that true?" Choza asked curiously.

Minato stared down at the sidewalk. "Uh…yeah."

"Wow," Shikaku snorted. "_I've_ been to more parties than you have."

"Well that's about to change!" Jiraiya laughed and pounded Minato on the back. "Why don't we kick this up a notch and go to—"

"I'm not going to a brothel," Minato cut him off swiftly. "A bar's bad enough."

"I can't go to a brothel," Shikaku muttered. "If Yoshino finds out—and she _will_—then I'm a dead man."

"Your girlfriend has you so whipped!" Inoichi cried. "It's sad."

"I shouldn't go either," Choza shrugged. "I have Mina anyway, why would I need to look at other girls?"

"You guys are no fun anymore since you picked up steady girls," Inoichi complained and slung an arm over Minato's shoulders. "At least you're girlfriend free, right?"

"Yeah," Minato nodded stiffly.

"He hasn't even _kissed_ a girl yet!" Jiraiya moaned. "Relations with women is the one area in which my genius student is useless! I'm a failure as a teacher!"

"Jiraiya-sensei!" Minato choked. "Stop it! You're making a scene!"

"Why won't you let me help you?" Jiraiya cried, heedless of Minato's embarrassment.

"Because—"

"Oh, there you are!"

All five of them snapped their heads to the side and found kunoichi standing nearby and grinning mischievously. She was of average height with long fiery red hair worn loose and wide blue eyes flecked with hints of green. Her body was lean and very lightly tanned. She wore plain black zori sandals without any heel to them or any other feminine styling to them, loose black pants that tightly hugged her hips, and a form-fitting black shirt that bared a few inches of her midriff and hinted at her cleavage with loose sleeves that ended at her elbows. There were black fingerless gloves on her hands, a strangely childish orange barrette holding back some of her hair from her face, and a hitae-ate tied around her left bicep.

She wasn't startling beautiful, but she was definitely noticeable. Certainly she was pretty, and Minato found her kind of cute with her little-girl hair accessory. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but he couldn't quite figure out what about her was familiar or where he might've met her.

"Can we help you?" Choza asked curiously.

"He can!" she smiled and pointed right at Minato. "He did me a favor and now I'd like to repay him. Is now a good time?"

The kunoichi had turned slightly, giving Minato a better view of the metal plate of her hitae-ate. Instead of the stylized swirled leaf of Konoha, it was the spiral of the recently crushed Whirlpool Country. And that along with the mention of a favor clicked in his head.

"Yes, now is fine," Minato nodded and slipped away from between Jiraiya and Inoichi. "Sorry guys, but I have to take a rain check. I'll catch up with you later."

He gently took her arm and led her down the street, leaving his four companions gaping after them. She let him lead her along for a few streets before she stopped walking and removed her limb from his loose grip. Minato glanced questioningly at her.

"I thought that the deal was that I picked where we went?"

"You will," he hurriedly assured her. "We just need to walk around for a while to make sure no one's spying on us."

She frowned. "Who would spy on us?"

"My sensei, at least." Minato scratched nervously at the back of his head. "He's, uh…nosy. I'd rather not have him criticize my 'dating skills' later."

"Oh." She half-grinned and offered her arm. "Just tell me when, then."

Pasting a friendly smile on his face, Minato took her arm again and continued walking. He took her on a little tour of the village, and although she listened attentively he got the feeling that she'd already familiarized herself with everything he showed her. And he topped it all off with another demonstration of his _Hiraishin_ to thoroughly lose any followers (like Jiraiya) that they might've picked up.

And then he bowed to her and let her take the lead…

* * *

Kushina worked hard to keep her cool as she brought him to the place of her choice: Ichiraku Ramen. The little food stand had opened up shortly after she'd arrive in Konoha. It was run by a friendly man, Ichiraku Teuchi, and his small, young family. They made fantastic ramen and she planned on becoming a regular there.

It was absolutely bizarre hanging off Namikaze's arm. She hadn't even allowed herself to dream of such a thing. And the real kicker was that he still had no idea who she was. If she could pull it off, she intended to keep her identity secret until the very end.

"Here we are!" she grinned as the stand came into view.

"A ramen stand?" He glanced down curiously at her.

"It's a great little place! Their soup is excellent. It kind of reminds me of home…"

A wave of melancholy hit her as she thought of her home village, now in the heartless hands of the Iwa-nin. She squashed it down and forced her mood up. There was all the time in the world to be down in the dumps later. Right now she had something that she wanted to accomplish.

Scampered a bit ahead, she parted the little half-curtains and waved Namikaze to enter. "Come on!"

He chuckled a little at her and obeyed her energetic command. To her delight all the stools were open and for the time being they had the place to themselves. The cook recognized her immediately, but noticing her companion did not call her by name. She'd let him in on her little game on her last visit and he was willing to play along with her.

"What can I get for you?" the cook asked.

"Miso ramen please!" Kushina declared.

"The same," Namikaze decided.

"Coming right up," the cook smiled and set to work.

"So," Kushina snagged chopsticks from the cup on the counter and broke them apart in preparation for her meal. "Tell me a bit about yourself."

Namikaze was a little startled at her sudden request, but complied. He told her a little about his _Hiraishin_ and a few other things that he was working on. A little more prodding got him to talk about some memorable missions and his friends. And all the while that he was talking, she was eating. With him distracted by his talking, she went through bowl after bowl until she hit her upper limit of twelve.

"…So, um, your turn," he finally decided. "Tell me about yourself."

"Well," she settled back on her stool and luxuriated in the feeling of being stuffed with tasty noodles. "For one thing, I'm done eating."

"You're done eat…ing?"

Kushina had to fight down laughter as his eyes grew comically wide when he finally noticed her stack of used bowls. Instant ramen was dirt cheap and restaurant ramen wasn't too much more expensive, but twelve bowls added up. His wallet was going to be hurting after this "date."

"And what else?" She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I'm from Whirlpool, I'm seventeen, just barely made jounin, I prefer taijutsu and _Suiton_ attacks, and I know a little _Fuuton_—"

"What's your name?" he interrupted.

She smiled and propped an elbow on the countertop. "Uzumaki Kushina."

"Uzumaki?" He twitched slightly.

"That's right." Her smile turned feral. "And if you ever call me 'Uzumaki-kun' again I'll make you bleed."

"Again? I…" His puzzled expression shifted to pure shock. "_You!_"

Kushina giggled and patted him on the head. "Very good, you remember me!"

He gaped at her. "How could I forget?"

"You never know," she shrugged. Kushina hopped off her stool and stood directly in front of him. "Now you know who I am and everything else you need to know about me. Thank you very much for the lift to the border and for lunch." She threw her arms around his shoulders in a quick hug and even went so far as to press a chaste little peck of a kiss to his cheek before he had any chance to react. "See you later, Namikaze! Bye, Teuchi-san!" And with a jaunty wave she skipped out of the stand and down the street.

_I am so awesome!_

* * *

Minato left the ramen stand with a spinning head and an empty wallet. He wandered the village streets aimlessly for a while, half-dazed by the bizarre episode. Eventually he came to rest in the woods near the training fields and settled down at the base of a large tree.

He remembered the Uzumaki kid all too well. Admittedly he hadn't though of him—_her_—since his humiliation had died down. But just hearing the name "Uzumaki" was enough to remind him of everything.

When he'd first met Uzumaki-san five years ago there had been very little to indicate that she was a she. Sure she'd been scrawny and small and had delicate facial features… But she was always dirty (there was always at least one smudge of dirt on her face), her hair was short and unkempt (half the time he'd wondered how the kid wasn't blinded by it), she wore baggy boyish clothing (never anything remotely girly, not a dress or skirt in sight), and they'd been at the age where a high voice and delicate features and small scrawny-ness didn't mean much. She was so crude and aggressive and foul-mouthed and…and _boyish_, that he just assumed her gender and—finding no evidence to contradict his assumption—went with it right up until the point where she'd smashed his nose with her little fist and declared her girlhood to him.

After her departure his friends had teased him mercilessly for months. _"Namikaze Minato didn't know a girl when he saw one,"_ they'd laughed. Jiraiya-sensei had slipped into an exaggerated depression, ashamed that his star pupil had made such an error with the "Great Jiraiya," wooer of women, as his teacher.

There was no mistaking her gender now. Her hair was much longer and better cared for. She was much cleaner (he'd smelled a faint hint of some kind of fruity shampoo on her hair when she'd hugged him). Her clothing was tight and slightly revealing in the essential female areas. Her manners were better (he shuddered at his memories of the way that she _used_ to eat). And even though she didn't wear any make-up or jewelry, she just looked a lot prettier than she had as a child.

_But she's still a bottomless pit,_ he sighed and thought of his flat wallet. _Where did she put all of that?! Her legs must be hollow…or something._

"There you are!" his "nosy" sensei cried and dropped down from the tree above. "So how did it go?" Jiraiya asked eagerly, like a child pleading for candy.

Minato shuddered and buried his face in his hands. "I don't want to talk about it," he mumbled.

"…Don't tell me you blew it?" the Sannin groaned.

"I…I don't know." _I'm not entirely sure how to classify what happened._

"How do you not know?" Jiraiya sputtered. "Did you score with her or make a fool of yourself?"

"Um…both…maybe?" _She totally played me…but she did give me a hug and a kiss…_

"'Both…maybe'?" Jiraiya repeated. "What does that _mean_? …It wasn't a pity kiss, was it? Please tell me it wasn't!"

"I'm not sure," Minato sighed. _She's impossible to figure out…and that was __**before**__ I knew she was a girl!_

"Well what happened?" his sensei demanded. "Details boy, details!"

"I don't want to talk about it," Minato huffed.

"Why not?" Jiraiya whined. "You blew it, didn't you? Damn it Minato, you shouldn't have ditched me! I could give you better advice if I'd been able to observe you with her!"

"I don't want your love advice, sensei," Minato grumbled. "You never 'scored' with the one woman that you really wanted to."

"Tsunade-hime's just a real tough nut to crack!" Jiraiya laughed boldly. "She'll come around eventually."

"Right," Minato snorted.

"But enough about that—_details!_"

Minato scowled. "No!"

"Pul-_lease_?!"

"Quit asking, sensei; I'm not going to answer!"

"You're so cruel to me, Minato-kun!" Jiraiya wailed, throwing an arm over his eyes. "I'm _dying_ of curiosity here!"

"Jiraiya-sensei!" Minato moaned. "Knock it off!"

"Not until you spill!" his teacher threatened.

Minato growled and glanced around, checking for anyone else who might be eavesdropping. "No one else came with you to find me, right?"

"Right!" Jiraiya nodded eagerly. "They all stayed back to drink and speculate about your date. There's probably a betting pool going now, too."

"Great." He scrubbed a hand wearily over his face. "Okay, okay…"

"So how did you meet this girl?" Jiraiya demanded.

"I ran into her on my scouting mission in the overrun Whirlpool Country—"

"That explains her hitae-ate."

"—where she was undercover at an inn. She poisoned some Iwa-nin and I used my _Hiraishin_ to get her to the border of the Land of Fire. In exchange, she agreed to go on a date with me…so that all of you would quit telling me to get a girlfriend and trying to set me up on blind dates."

"I see, I see." Jiraiya beckoned at him. "Continue."

"I was in such a hurry when I met her that I never really set a date or a place or caught her name. All we agreed upon was that she would do it and that she decided where we went."

"So you left her to track you down?" the Sannin snorted. "Minato, Minato, you're hopeless!"

"Well, she found me, as you saw, and after losing you, she brought us to this ramen stand—"

"A ramen stand?! What sort of romantic location is that?"

"It wasn't supposed to be romantic. It was just me taking a girl out so that you all would shut up. And she picked the place," he shrugged. "It's what she wanted." _And it's probably for the best. I'd be deep in debt if she wanted to go somewhere expensive…_

"Whatever," Jiraiya snorted, "Keep going."

"So we order and she gets me talking while she just sits there and eats and nods."

"That's so boring," Jiraiya complained.

"Oh it gets better," Minato scowled. "When I run out of things to say, it's her turn. It's then that I notice how much she ended up eating…"

"What? Did she eat a lot?"

"Twelve whole bowls of miso ramen," Minato informed him.

"That skinny chick ate that much?!" Jiraiya laughed. "Oh wow! The bill must've been killer!"

"I'm broke," Minato moaned, inciting his immature teacher to even more laughter.

"Okay, okay, I'm done," Jiraiya sniggered, rubbing at his eyes. "What next?"

"She tells me a little about herself, and I ask her what her name is—"

"You still didn't know?!"

"—and she tells me." Minato sighed and slumped against the tree trunk.

"Oh? So who is she?"

"…You remember, five years ago, that…" Minato squirmed in embarrassment. "You remember Uzumaki-san?"

"Don't you mean 'Uzumaki-kun'?" Jiraiya snorted. "Of course I remember her! What's she got to do with your mystery date?"

Minato slumped lower. "That was her."

"What was her?"

"My 'mystery date.' She was Uzumaki-san."

There was a long, long pause. "That cute red-head who picked you up at the bar was the Uzumaki brat?"

"Yes, sensei."

"That dirty little tomboy…turned into _that_?!"

"Yes, sensei."

Jiraiya frowned and glanced up at the clear sky overhead.

"What are you looking for, Jiraiya-sensei?"

"Just checking to see if the sky is falling yet," he replied calmly. "The end of the world must be nigh."

Minato slapped his forehead, but secretly agreed.


	3. Fireflies

**Chapter 3: **_Fireflies_

It was high summer—hot, muggy, and miserable. Three months had passed since Minato's "date" with Uzumaki-san and—aside from the occasional fleeting glimpse of red hair—he hadn't seen her or heard from her since. He could almost forget that she was in the village.

For a while, his friends pestered him about his date, but he managed to avoid telling them any details about what had happened. His sensei kept his secret for him, though he probably did that to avoid admitting how "lame" his student was with entertaining women. And it seemed that Uzumaki-san wasn't running around bragging about how she ripped a free lunch off him; Minato hadn't even heard a whisper of a rumor about what went down at the ramen stand.

In the time since Uzumaki-san's unexpected return, other survivors of Uzu (Whirlpool) had trickled into Konoha. Minato hadn't really met any of them, but he'd heard about them from his sensei. Some stayed only long enough to recover from injuries and then left again, hungry for vengeance, but the majority stayed on, willing to serve Konoha for lack of anything else to do.

Konoha wasn't officially at war with Iwa. Not yet. But with how Iwa kept getting into little skirmishes with Konoha-nin, it was inevitable. Iwa was riding high from its defeat of Uzu and was hungry for more victory on a bigger target. Full war might not start tomorrow, but it would start soon.

To unwind from the rising tensions, Minato's friends had set up a little party at a bar under the pretext of welcoming some of the more friendly Uzu-nin to Konoha. Inoichi, with Inuzuka Isamu and his partner Katsumaru, had forcibly redeemed Minato's "rain check" so he had little choice but to attend. No important mission had come up to save him from the party, and so he found himself in the bar that he'd dodged months earlier, surrounded by other shinobi.

Aside from Inoichi, Choza, Shikaku, and Isamu (Katsumaru was curled up under the table), the rest of the party included Uchiha Fugaku, Hyuuga Hizashi (his identical twin Hiashi was busy with clan business), and Shiranui Ichiro. Jiraiya was out on a mission, otherwise Minato was certain that he'd be present as well, despite the fact that he'd be one of the oldest at the collection of pushed-together tables. Minato found himself reluctantly tucked between Isamu and Inoichi, the loud, gregarious playboys.

Across from the clump of Konoha shinobi were a handful of Uzu shinobi. They were mostly jounin though Minato thought one of them might be a chuunin. Minato really hadn't caught their names, but he had been introduced to Arata, Hachiro, and Daichi. The rest of them were a mystery to him.

Minato reluctantly sipped at his shot of sake, grimacing at the burning sensation as the alcohol trickled down his throat. He didn't drink much; he despised the woozy sensation it gave him, it made him feel vulnerable. The smoky air of the bar added to Minato's discomfort.

Everyone else was having a good time. They drank and laughed and swapped raunchy stories. It was a little informal party. Minato wondered how long he had to wait until it was safe for him to sneak away.

"Hey!" one of the Uzu-nin, Daichi piped up during one of the brief lulls in conversation. "You look familiar." He pointed to Minato. "What's your name again?"

"Namikaze Minato," he replied warily.

The other man scratched at his little black goatee thoughtfully, then he smirked. "Oh yeah…_you_."

"Who is he, Daichi?" his friends asked curiously. "You know him?"

"I remember you from the exchange a few years back," Daichi smirked. "You're the guy who thought that Uzumaki-chan was a boy."

Minato flushed in embarrassment and barely resisted the urge to bang his head on the table. _There's no way that I'm ever living that down, is there?_

All the Uzu-nin exploded into hysterical laughter. Some of the Konoha-nin did too. But the rest were confused.

"Oh god, I remember that!" Isamu howled, slapping his knee. "That was so awesome! Didn't she break your nose?"

Minato ducked his head and growled out a sour, "Yes."

"What happened?" Hizashi asked curiously.

"Well, my team and I came to Konoha for the Genin Exchange a few years back," Daichi explained, taking it upon himself to relate the tale. "And one of my teammates, Uzumaki-chan, is this huge tomboy. When we came, she was all scrawny and little and looked a lot like a boy. And I guess Blondie here"—he smirked and nodded at Minato—"just figured that she _was _a boy, even though her name's _Kushina_. He even started calling her 'Uzumaki-_kun_'!"

That sent the Uzu-nin into snickering fits.

"At first she lets it slide. I mean, we all thought it was a joke. But then, just as we're leaving, she finally has it with him. He calls her 'Uzumaki-kun' one last time and she slugs him in the face! Then she _corrects_ him and storms off!" Daichi cackled. "Oh you should've seen the look on his face!"

Minato buried his face in his hands. _Oh, make it stop!_

"That's pathetic, Namikaze," Fugaku snorted. "Confusing a girl for a boy."

"Can we not talk about this anymore?" Minato pleaded.

"No, no, let's talk about it some more!" Isamu clapped. "C'mon, tell us, what's the ragamuffin look like now?"

"Uzumaki-chan?" Daichi grinned. "What do you say boys? What's she look like now?"

"She's cute."

"She actually looks like a girl!"

"I think she's pretty enough."

"Dude, she's _hot_!"

"I wouldn't say 'hot,' but definitely pleasant to look at."

"Could you be more specific than 'she looks good'?" Inoichi asked. "Details, please."

"Alright." Arata took over the lead and settled back in his chair. "My dear classmate, Uzumaki-chan, is a lean red-head; long, long hair; blue-green eyes, wide and expressive; not terribly well endowed"—he made a vague gesture towards his chest—"but still nice enough to look at… Hm, what else?"

"Huh, that sounds kind of like that girl that picked you up a few months back," Inoichi remarked, eying Minato. "You know, that one you refuse to talk about."

"I thought I saw an Uzu hitae-ate on her arm," Choza added in-between bites of some snack that he was devouring.

The Uzu-nin, almost as one, leaned forward in intense interest.

"Oh, an Uzu-kunoichi you say?" Daichi almost purred.

"Did she have long red hair? With a little girl barrette-thing?" Hachiro added.

"Dude!" Arata grinned wolfishly at Minato. "Did you two go out?! For real?"

"That sounds like her, yeah," Inoichi nodded and jabbed Minato in the side with his elbow. "So is this why you won't mention your date? 'Cause it was with a girl that beat you up once? What, did she give you a black eye or something?"

Minato rubbed at his abused side and shrank into his chair. "Um…"

"Wait, wait, wait, you went out with Uzumaki?" Isamu sputtered.

"…Yeah," Minato muttered, staring fixedly down at the shot glass in his hand.

There was a sudden stretch of shocked silence.

"She actually agreed to go out with you?" Arata asked, stupefied.

Minato itched nervously at the back of his head. "Yes…"

"Oh my god, you're my hero!" Arata laughed. "You actually got her to go out with you? Wow! And here we all thought that she was a lesbian!"

"…Come again?" Minato choked.

"She's never gone out with any guy _ever_," Hachiro informed him. "And lots of guys have asked, ever since she turned fifteen. She turned them all down."

"She's never hit on a guy outside of a mission, never kissed a guy outside of a mission—_nothing_!" Arata shrugged. "Guys never seemed to be her thing, so it has to be girls. And it makes sense, too. She's this huge tomboy, so maybe—"

"Oh hey guys!" Uzumaki Kushina herself seemed to materialize out of nowhere right over Daichi's shoulder and glanced around with a cheery smile on her face. "Having a little party?"

"Hey, Uzumaki-chan!" Daichi waved. "Glad to see you made it out alright."

"Yeah, I managed," she shrugged and glanced around curiously. "What'cha talkin' about?"

"He was explaining to us his reasoning for why he thought you were a lesbian," Fugaku replied, gesturing towards Arata.

Her smile shifted slightly, like it was being forced, and Minato suddenly got a bad feeling. "Oh? You thought I was a lesbian?"

"Yeah," Arata nodded.

"Who else thought that?" she asked, glancing around at her Uzu colleagues.

They glanced at each other before raising their hands, some higher than others.

"I see," she nodded gravely to herself.

…And then she exploded.

She focused her wrath on Arata first, pummeling him in the head (_"You stupid, horny perv! Just because I won't go out with you doesn't mean I'm into girls!"_). Once he was thoroughly beaten, she expanded her rage to the other Uzu shinobi (_"You bastards! I thought you were smarter than Arata-baka! What's the matter with you?!"_). And then just before the bouncers were moving to eject her, she abruptly stopped her rampage and stormed out, terrified patrons darting out of her way like startled roaches.

"Wow…" Isamu breathed, peering out from under the table with Katsumaru. "I guess she's not a lesbian."

* * *

The muggy summer night did nothing to cool her raging temper. Kushina stormed through the forest around Konoha with no particular destination in mind. Her race through the trees was purely to bleed off energy and emotional overload. She could've just gone and killed someone, but outside of a mission or self-defense, that wasn't legal.

_A lesbian?! _she fumed. _They think that I chase skirts like them?! Am I __**that**__ much of a tomboy that they can't imagine me lusting after a man?!_

Snarling, she upped her speed, pumping chakra into her legs until they ached, and pumping her legs until her lungs burned. Leaves and twigs slapped at her face and exposed skin, leaving stinging welts and the occasional bleeding cut, but she barely felt it. She was little more than a blur of red and black as she dashed ragged laps around the village.

Eventually her breath ran out and her chakra ran low and she failed to make a leap from one tree to the next. She splashed down in a small lake and floated on her back as she gasped for air. The cold water helped ease the burning inside and she closed her eyes and ceased to think for a while.

But bit by bit thoughts began to worm their way into her consciousness.

She thought about Uzu. How she'd never see it again, not as it was. All the people she'd never see again—her brothers, some of her classmates, her sensei, her neighbors. What were those Iwa jerks doing to her home? Why the hell had they wanted it in the first place?

Childhood memories drifted before her eyes. She remembered her gruff father, a good man who loved his sons but had no idea what to do with a daughter. She remembered her older brothers who had even less of an idea what to do with a sister. She remembered beating boys up at school, teasing girls for being worthless sissies, learning to throw kunai and shuriken and how to set traps with wires and exploding tags. She remembered how it always rained and the smell of the sea and her grandfather's stories and a ghostly lullaby that maybe her long-dead mother had sung to her as a child…

Kushina slowly opened her eyes and stared blankly up at the sky. The stars overhead were so tiny and distant and cold. The moon was barely a sliver in the sky. She sighed, almost choking on the humid air, and tears silently slipped from her eyes.

No one would come for her. It wasn't that they didn't care; it was that they thought that she didn't need it. She was Uzumaki Kushina, the tomboy, not a weepy, weak, pathetic girl. When she got mad or sad, she did what guys did: break something or hurt someone. She didn't cry…much, and certainly not in front of other people.

Tears were a sign of weakness. Tears were for girls. So what if she was a girl? She wasn't like them, she was different, special. Tears were not for her.

When the cold water ceased to be soothing and started to make her teeth chatter, Kushina stiffly lurched to her feet. Her chakra was low, but she had enough to comfortably stand on the surface of the lake for a while. Numbly she noted that her legs were going to get back at her the next day for her reckless, rage-fueled sprint.

Her long hair was soaked and felt heavy and it was hard to hold her head up. As she wrung it out, she glanced around with bleary eyes. Tiny winking lights, yellow-green-ish in color, caught her attention as they drifted along the banks of the lake and over the shallows of the water.

"Fireflies," she mumbled hoarsely. A bitter smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "It always rained too much in Uzu for a lot of fireflies…"

She padded over to the shallows and stood there in her waterlogged clothes as the blinking insects drifted around her. The whole experience felt dream-like, almost soothing. For a moment she imagined that she was someone else; a girly daydream where she wasn't a tomboy, but just a girl who didn't have to be strong all the time, didn't have to push herself so hard, didn't have a care in the world.

_I bet the boys wouldn't think I was a lesbian if I was just like other girls. I wonder if I'd even be friends with those guys… I'd probably hang out with other girls and do girly things like gossip and shop and play with hair. …How boring._

Closing her eyes, she shrugged aside that little daydream for another.

She thought of her little lunch-date with Namikaze. It had been a lot nicer than she'd expected. Not only did she get all the free food that she'd wanted, but it had been fun just hanging out with him and not fighting him or cussing at him. And it didn't hurt that he was nice to look at.

_It's a pity that we can't just erase the past and start over fresh. I was such an awful brat to him back then… _She sighed and cracked her eyelids open a little to watch the lazy dance of the fireflies. _If I could do it all over again…I'd still sock him in the nose if he called me a boy._

There was a faint rustling sound off to the side as someone moved around nearby in the forest. She tensed for a moment, wary for any threat. There was a very low-scale war going on. But she sensed no killer intent, no spiking chakra, nothing threatening at all. There was even something familiar about the presence that she sensed, but she couldn't place it.

Whoever it was drew closer and closer until she was certain they had reached the edge of the lake near where she was standing. She felt eyes on her, but she ignored the watcher. She wasn't naked or crying or doing anything embarrassing so she wasn't bothered by any staring.

The feeling of chakra depletion, the hollow weariness, was starting to get stronger. Soon she wouldn't be able to support her weight on top of the water. So, reluctantly, she returned to dry land, but moved slowly enough so as not to disturb the fireflies that hung in the air around her.

She vaguely wondered how late it was and if the party was still going on or if her temper tantrum had dispersed it. Her clothes were still damp, but not as soaked as they had been, giving her the feeling that she'd been out on the lake for a lot longer than she thought. Idly she debated whether or not to head back to her quarters in the ninja barracks (AKA the tiny closet-sized apartments for lonely, single ninja).

Spinning in place, she came to a halt when her eyes finally landed on her watcher. It was Namikaze and he was staring at her with an odd expression on his face. It was something like a cross between someone who was dazed from a blow to the head and someone who was half-asleep. Maybe if she wasn't so spent from her rampage she might've been able to find something funny to say about his face.

"Hi," she half-smiled. "What brings you out here?"

He gave a guilty start at the sound of her voice. "Uh, U-Uzumaki-san, I—"

"You can use my first name if you want," she interrupted. "There'd be less chance of you messing up and adding the wrong honorific at the end."

"K-Kushina-san," he swallowed and paused to gather his scattered composure. "Are you alright?"

"Am I alright?" she repeated blankly.

"Earlier…the, uh, lesbian comment…you seemed…upset."

She wrinkled her nose. "Oh, that. Yeah, I'm alright. I just needed to blow off some steam. I'm fine now."

"Well, that's good…" He rubbed at the back of his head and then hesitantly walked over to stand next to her. "So…how have you been?"

"Aside from today, pretty good I guess." She held up her hand and let one of the fireflies land on her fingertip. "Konohagakure's a nice place. I like it here well enough. Though I wish wasn't so hot and sticky."

"It's summer," he shrugged.

"That explains everything, eh?" She blew the glowing bug off her hand and leaned against the nearest tree trunk. "What's it like in the winter? Does it snow?"

"Sometimes a little bit, if there's a strong enough cold snap. But usually it just rains a lot and is unpleasant."

She laughed a little, and it sounded a little hollow to her ear. "Sounds like fun, I can't wait."

Namikaze peered at her with some concern. "Are you sure that you're alright?"

"I'm just tired," she sighed. "I think I'll head back now."

Kushina pushed off the tree and started picking her way back towards the village. Her legs felt heavy and rubbery from the abuse she'd put them through and she hoped that she had enough steam to make it back to her bed. Before she could say good-bye to Namikaze, he moved to follow her.

"Have you pulled many missions since arriving?"

"Not as many as I'd like," she sighed. "But enough to get by so far. How about you?"

"I've been busy enough." He paused for a minute or two and then went on. "There's this advanced student that I've been tutoring. He graduated very early from the Academy and he really didn't fit in with the older graduates so he's not really on a team right now."

"A loner?" She frowned thoughtfully. "How's that working for him?"

"Alright I suppose," he shrugged though he looked worried. "The boy's a genius, he's made chuunin already and he isn't quite ten years old yet. At the rate that he's progressing, he'll be a jounin around the time that most kids graduate the Academy."

Kushina let out a low whistle. "Very, very impressive." She tilted her head curiously at him. "So why are you so worried about that?"

"Well, he's advanced so far beyond his peers that he has no friends. He was always the youngest in his class, and keeping him apart this way only makes it harder to get him to make friends." Namikaze frowned. "His attitude doesn't help any, either."

"His attitude?"

"He prefers working alone. Teamwork is his weakest area and he makes little effort to improve upon it. When he's put in a situation with a team where he must chose between protect his client or a teammate, he'll protect the client and leave his teammate to die."

She grimaced. "That's not good."

"No it's not." Namikaze shook his head. "No matter what I try to do to steer him in a better direction, he resists. I think it has something to do with his father's disgrace and suicide."

"Who is this kid?" Kushina asked curiously.

"His name is Hatake Kakashi," Namikaze replied. "His father was Hatake Sakumo, Konoha's White Fang."

Kushina picked at her damp sleeves. "I think I remember hearing something about the White Fang screwing up something bad, but…he _killed himself_?"

"Yeah, he did. And because of that, Kakashi is driven to train harder, hold himself aloof, and follow the rules." Namikaze made a sour face. "If he thinks you're breaking or skirting a rule from the shinobi handbook, he'll quote the rule to you."

"That's awful!" Kushina shuddered. "It's a good thing that you're his teacher and not me. I'd lose my patience with him and smack him in the head or something!"

Namikaze winced at that. "Um…"

She glanced around and found that they'd made it to the outskirts of the village. It was quite late; most buildings were dark and there were few people about. Kushina estimated how much further she had to go, sighed tiredly, and prayed that her flagging energy held out long enough.

Kushina pressed on in silence. She couldn't think of anything else to say and didn't feel like wasting her energy on talking. The silence didn't feel awkward or uncomfortable to her, so she let it be.

It was nice hanging out with Namikaze, she decided. In the months between now and the date she'd caught glimpses of him around the village or at the training grounds, but she'd always kept her distance for a variety of reasons. Maybe she ought to change her strategy a little…

The barracks building finally came into view and Kushina somehow managed to pick up the pace. Her crappy little bed was calling her name and she didn't want to keep it waiting. Namikaze matched her pace easily.

"Why are you following me?" she asked.

"I, uh, well…" He seemed to find the odd shadows cast by the streetlights fascinating. "I don't live too far from here and I thought that I'd keep you company."

"You didn't have to bother, but thanks." She tucked a loose strand of red hair behind her ear. "So did I totally crash your party back there, or what?"

"I guess," he shrugged. "I wasn't really into it much. Sitting around and getting drunk isn't my idea of fun."

"So…did I rescue you?" she asked, faintly amused at the thought.

"Yeah," he laughed. "I suppose you could look at it that way."

"Glad to be of service then." She paused at the front door of her building. "Goodnight"—a little wave—"I'll see you later."

He smiled a little and waved back. "Bye." Then he flickered away in a flash of yellow light.

"Cheater," she muttered under her breath and turned to make the long and painful trek up the three flights of stairs to her room. _Tomorrow morning's gonna suck… But at least tonight wasn't quite as bad as I thought._


	4. Consolation

**Chapter 4: **_Consolation_

Kushina strolled through the village streets towards her favorite little bar. She'd just got off a rough mission and a little sake was just what the doctor ordered to help her unwind. Yeah, a little sake and then off to bed for a good twelve hour sleep. Then she'd feel human again.

It had taken a few years, but Konoha had finally been drawn into a full-scale war with Iwa. Konoha was a large and powerful village and its strength afforded its citizens a great measure of security. Civilians were only mildly affected by rationing and shortages; they walked their own streets fearlessly. But their ninja guardians knew better, and suffered for it.

It had been nearly three years since she had come to this village. After her first year of loyal service, she'd been given a Leaf hitae-ate, which she wore on her right arm in addition to her old Whirlpool one that she still wore on her left. During her second year of service, full war had come and she'd been very busy. And now in the beginning of her third year it was only getting worse.

Now young genin teams were being deployed to the frontlines for minor missions to free up the dwindling supply of older, more experienced ninja for other missions. The little kids still usually had their jounin teachers with them to help out, but it was still very dangerous. Kushina didn't like it at all, but she wasn't Hokage and she couldn't put a stop to it.

_That just shows how hard Iwa is pushing,_ she sighed bitterly as the streetlights flickered on and the sun kept sinking. _Now they're sending out snot-nosed kids to get butchered. Damn, that sucks!_

Worse, Namikaze's kids were no exception—they'd been drafted like all the other kids. In addition to little "lone wolf" Kakashi, he'd picked up two other genin less than a year ago to round out his squad into a proper four-man team. Barely six months after forming his "Team 7" Kakashi had made jounin, fulfilling his sensei's earlier prediction. But due to his young age, even though he was a jounin Kakashi remained under Namikaze's tutelage, much to the kid's annoyance. Kushina enjoyed rubbing his snotty little nose in that fact.

Hatake Kakashi was an arrogant little booger, no doubt about it. Kushina's first meeting with the kid about a week after the little "lesbian comment" had gone about as well as her first meeting with Namikaze. The silver-haired brat did little more than criticize her and scorn her. She retaliated with a wide range of non-lethal threats that ranged from stringing him up by his toes to ripping the little cloth mask off his mouth so that she could see all of his face. And that's pretty much how their relationship continued.

Uchiha Obito was a much more pleasant kid, she found. Unlike most Uchiha, he lacked their characteristic aloof arrogance. He was a fun-loving dork who was always late, gave the weirdest excuses for his lateness, always ran around in orange ski goggles, and was always fighting with Kakashi. Though clumsy, he had some real potential. And once he managed to awaken his Sharingan, Kushina knew that he'd be a real force to be reckoned with. As soon as he joined Namikaze's team, she became buddies with him.

Rin rounded out "Team 7" and Kushina got along nearly as well as she did with Obito. The brown-haired kunoichi was a nice enough girl. She wasn't much of a fighter—her skills with taijutsu and ninjutsu were passable, but not great. Her true talent seemed to lie in medical ninjutsu, and she spent most of her training sessions studying dense medical texts or tracking down a real medical ninja to get some practice in. The girl worked well enough with her team, but whenever she let her little crush on Kakashi get the best of her Kushina secretly (sometimes not so secretly) gagged.

As for Namikaze Minato, the team leader and sensei, Kushina knew him best. Whenever she ran into him and had the time, she'd hang out with him, pester him, whatever she felt like doing. It was fun. She got to know him and his habits quite well.

So when she stepped inside her favorite bar and spied Namikaze already there and drinking she knew that something was terribly, horribly wrong. Namikaze wasn't a drinker. To get him in a bar he had to be dragged there. With pervy old Jiraiya no where in sight, and no boozing friend of his anywhere in the vicinity, it appeared that he'd come all on his own…

Kushina surreptitiously glanced at the ceiling, expecting it to cave in at any second as the sky crashed down in the early stages of Armageddon.

Recovering herself from the shock, she straightened up and marched right up to his back. She draped her arms over his shoulders and leaned on him lightly…and he had absolutely no reaction. Normally he'd at least stiffen up when she did that to him. She noted the nearly empty bottle of sake at his elbow and bit her lip.

On the rare occasion that he did drink, he drank very little. Usually a few shots of sake, maybe a bottle of ale, nothing more. Once Jiraiya had managed to pressure him into drinking half a bottle of sake, and he had laid his head on the table and whined about feeling dizzy for the rest of the night. He had no tolerance for booze. Right now he had to be absolutely smashed.

"Oi, slow down will you!" she snapped and stole the shot glass from his hand and tossed back the contents in one harsh gulp.

Namikaze stared blankly at his suddenly empty hand for several minutes. Then he sluggishly turned to peer at her. His clear blue eyes were glazed and empty. Kushina swallowed a bitter surge of unease.

"Hey, knock it off, Namikaze!" She flicked him in the nose. "What's the matter with you, huh?"

He squinted at her blankly. "K-K'shina-san?" he slurred uncertainly.

"Duh!" she snorted, burying her worry under a shield of annoyance. She slammed down his empty shot glass, tossed down enough money to cover the cost of his sake, and then started wrestling the man off his bar stool. "Get up, Sunshine, we're leaving!"

"W-we're leavin'?" He swayed so badly he nearly pulled her to the floor. "Why?"

"Because you're done," Kushina grumbled and slung one of his arms over her shoulders.

"No 'm not," he scowled childishly and started to dig in his heels.

"Yes you are," she answered firmly. "If you still want sake later, I'll get you some, okay?"

He eyed her warily. "A'right."

"Good," she muttered and began the arduous process of getting him back to her apartment.

Ideally she would've taken him to his apartment, made sure that he got into bed okay, and left him to sober up on his own. Then she'd track him down later and find out just what the hell he'd been thinking. But as she'd never been to his apartment and never bothered to find out where it was, she couldn't take him there. So unless she ran into Jiraiya on her way back, it looked like Namikaze would be sleeping over at her place.

Getting him back to her tiny apartment was an adventure that she really could've down without. He was taller than her and heavier and he was drunk enough to be barely more than deadweight. Maneuvering him and keeping him upright was hell enough. Worrying about him spewing on or near her was something else. To hopefully prevent that occurrence, she leveled many threats against him, most of them involving painful ways of removing his manhood.

The stairs in her apartment building almost defeated them. He just couldn't seem to keep his feet underneath him and climb the steps at the same time. Immensely irritated, she ended up forcing him to crawl up the stairs on his hands and knees to avoid him toppling over backwards (maybe taking her with him) and breaking his neck or something.

"You so owe me for this," she snarled as she shoved him into her tiny living space.

He muttered something incoherent and collapsed face-first onto her bed.

She glared at his back. "Hey, you're supposed to sleep on the floor."

"Mph," he grunted and rolled onto his side.

Kushina rolled her eyes. She pulled off his sandals, his kunai pouch, his shuriken holster, his flak jacket, and his hitae-ate. Then she shucked her own ninja gear and briefly retreated to her little bathroom to slip into a loose T-shirt and gray sweatpants. Sure Namikaze was drunk off his ass and probably wouldn't remember much, but she wasn't about to let him get a peep at her.

"Now," she breezed out of the bathroom and perched on the edge of her bed near his head. "Mind telling my why you've suddenly decided to give alcoholism a try?"

His sulky expression melted into one of pure despair. "Obito's dead."

"Shit." That explained everything. "Shit, shit, shit."

Not Obito. Not him. Not that sweet little gem of an Uchiha. No, no, no.

She had the misfortune to know a lot of dead people. There were a lot of enemies, sure. But there were a lot of family and friends too. And now little Obito had joined their ranks.

Kushina squeezed her eyes shut and hung her head. Scratch Namikaze owing her anything for rescuing him from the bar and public drunkenness. He didn't owe her a thing.

"I left 'em," he whispered. "Thought they'd be okay w'out me for a'while. But there were more Iwa 'round then I though' an…and they kidnapped Rin. Obito wen' after her…an K'kashi wen' after him…an-and—"

"I get it," she whispered, cutting off his slurred story. "Are Rin and Kakashi alright?"

"They…they will be…I think." He half-buried his face into her pillow. "I dunno."

She brushed the hair from his eyes and watched his face for a moment. Gnawing at her lip, she briefly left him to lock her door and turn out the light. Then she nudged him over on her bed until his back touched the wall. Tucking him in, she slipped in beside him and hugged him.

"It's safe now. Your mission is over. Your students aren't around. There's no one that you have to show a strong face to. You can cry now, Minato," she whispered. "I promise I won't tell anyone."

At first it seemed like he was going to ignore her advice. But then she heard the first choked sobs. That was the downside of men's macho attitudes, it was always so hard for them to let go and cry, even when they needed to. She held onto him until his tears subsided and the alcohol and his physical exhaustion made him pass out.

And then she let her own tears leak out as she mourned the little dorky Uchiha that she'd never see again.

* * *

His head really, really hurt. And there was an absolutely foul taste in his mouth. And he wanted to puke or die…preferably just die.

For an agonizing eternity, he couldn't remember anything. But then bits of his life and self drifted back to him. And then he remembered…

_Obito's dead._

Then he felt a million times worse. One of his students, a treasured Uchiha, was gone forever. He'd left them alone, confident that they could function as a team and defend themselves without him. And he'd been so wrong.

He somehow held it together as Rin told him everything that happened. He kept it together when Kakashi regained consciousness and he apologized to his first student. And all through the long and painful march back to the village he found some way to stay strong and alert to any threats towards his remaining students. But as soon as both children were out of his sight, he couldn't do it anymore.

Jiraiya was off on a mission. So were most of his close friends. Lacking any comforting company, he found himself in a bar testing the claim that alcohol drowns sorrows. Everything was a hazy blur after that point.

_I'm hung-over,_ he realized numbly. _Crap. …Where am I?_

Minato cracked open one eye and glanced around hazily. He was in a darkened apartment. Sunlight streamed in through cracks in the blinds and left bright spots on the far wall. There was a small pile of dirty dishes in the sink. The shelves were overflowing with scrolls, ninja gear, and various knick-knacks. Dirty clothes were piled in and around the clothes hamper—

_—Is that a bra?!_

He sat up much too fast as panic struck him and his head exploded into agony. Horror stories of friends and friends of friends about waking up from long nights of drinking with strange women in strange beds swirled in his throbbing head. It didn't matter that he was the only one in the bed or that he was still mostly clothed (most importantly his pants were still on), his fearful imagination ran wild. It made him sick to his stomach…literally.

By sheer luck, he found the bathroom in time and the toilet became his new best friend for a while. As he clung to the cool, white porcelain and retched miserably, he sank into utter shame and humiliation. He really, really wished that he'd never given into the grief-stricken impulse to drink himself into oblivion.

Sometime later the apartment's owner returned and found him in her bathroom. She said nothing to him and he couldn't bear to look at her out of shame. Wordlessly she gave him water to clean out his mouth, then some pills for his raging headache, and then half-dragged him back to her bed where he buried his face into the pillow and prayed for the mattress to swallow him whole.

_Oh god, oh god, oh god…_

A small calloused hand brushed against the back of his neck. "You'd better not smother yourself, Sunshine. I didn't fish you out of that bar to have you suffocate yourself in my bed."

A jolt of horror arced through him and he peeked up from the pillow with dread. "Kushina-san?"

"I'm guessing that you blacked out last night." She smirked humorlessly at him. "Figures."

"I…" He tried his best to melt into the bed as nightmarish fragments of scenarios assaulted his aching brain. "What did I do?"

"To my knowledge, the only dumb thing you did was go drink yourself stupid without any company." She patted his unruly yellow hair and strode across the room. "Next time wait a few hours for me to get back in town, okay?"

"Okay?" he squeaked uncertainly.

She snorted at him and started to unpack a few bags of groceries; apparently she'd been out picking up some supplies when he'd woken up. Her long, red hair was tied back in a loose tail and she was dressed in casual sweats. It was very odd to see her dressed as anything other than a kunoichi.

Minato watched as she shoved things into the fridge and various cabinets, wincing whenever something clattered loudly and aggravated his head. When she finished that little chore, she returned to the bed and sat down, propping her back against the headboard. Her expression turned sad and her fingers started to gently fiddle with his hair.

Uzumaki Kushina and "gentle" didn't seem to go together. She was bold and loud and rough and aggressive. She was rarely serious, always pestering him and popping up at the most random times to bother him and his students. It was totally surreal for her to be petting his hair. Maybe it was a dream.

"Obito's—"

"I know," she whispered. "You told me last night."

Tears stung at his eyes and his throat ached. "I…I—"

"I know. But Rin and Kakashi are alright, right?"

He swallowed hard. "Yes."

"It's going to suck for a long time, but hang on for them, okay?" Her fingers kept combing through his hair. "They're going to need you more now than ever."

Minato could only nod as something gave inside him and tears started to worm their way out of his eyes. His arms snaked around her waist and he buried his face into her stomach. She made no move to push him away; she just gently held onto him and let him wear himself out.

He didn't know why he left himself break down in front of her. It was a stupid thing to do. She probably marked him as some kind of cry-baby. But it felt good to let go, just this once…

* * *

Late that afternoon, Kushina shooed Namikaze off to his own apartment to finish recuperating from his hang-over and then made a break for the training fields. It was mid-autumn and cold and raining, but she didn't care. The miserable weather kind of reminded her of Uzu and in a twisted way it was kind of comforting. But nothing would make her feel better than bashing wooden posts into oblivion.

She made a beeline for the field that Namikaze's little squirts usually monopolized with every intention of blowing off a lot of steam. But those intentions were thwarted when she spied a hunched figure at the field's memorial stone. It was a small block of gray stone and it bore the names of those killed in action who had begun their ninja careers on that particular field. Obito's name had probably just been added only hours before.

Kushina wouldn't have been terribly surprised to see Rin there, holding vigil for her fallen teammate. Although the girl was usually annoyed by Obito's antics and generally took Kakashi's side in arguments, she bore the Uchiha no ill-will. She was a caring girl, a healer by nature, and Obito's death would no doubt hit her very hard.

But it was little Kakashi who sat vigil before the stone, not Rin. The silver-haired boy who hid the lower half of his face behind a cloth mask knelt underneath an umbrella as the rain poured down around him. At his feet sat Obito's favorite pair of ski goggles (the ones with orange lenses), cracked and battered.

She watched him for a while, idly wondering just how long he'd been sitting there. Clearly it had been a long time, and he showed no signs of leaving anytime soon. She sighed softly and trudged through the rain to crouch beside him and pay her own respects to the names of the fallen.

"Have you come to tell me how bad I screwed up?" the boy asked bitterly.

"No. Do you want me to?"

His little shoulders slumped. "No."

"Good, 'cause I didn't feel like it anyway."

He slowly turned to look at her with a mournful look on his face. But her attention was instantly fixed on his eyes, specifically his left eye. A fresh vertical scar bisected his eyelids and a blood-red Sharingan inhabited the eye socket instead of his natural eye. And the Sharingan eye—_Obito's eye_!—was crying while Kakashi's natural dark eye was sad, but dry.

It made Obito's death all the more tragic. The kid had finally awakened his legendary kekkei genkai, only to die. Little medical prodigy Rin had probably done the surgery moments before the young Uchiha had expired. And the girl had pulled it off nicely, her field surgery looked successful.

_Damn it! The Uchiha clan's gonna shit a collective brick when they find out about this…_

The Uchiha clan was full of secrets and arrogant pricks. Obito hadn't been like them. He was a breath of fresh air, and giving up his eye to Kakashi—his fierce rival—was something that the sweet kid would do. But once his clan got wind of it, there'd be hell to pay. The fact that an outsider—it didn't matter that he was a fellow, loyal Konoha-nin—possessed even one of their precious eyes would be unacceptable to them.

"How long have you been out here?" she asked.

Kakashi looked away. "I don't know."

Kushina frowned at that answer. "I assume that he made you promise him something before he gave you that gift."

"Yes," the boy nodded. "He told me to take care of Rin."

"Well, you can't do that if you sit out here in the rain all day and get sick," she snorted and stood up. "Come on, I'll buy you some lunch."

He hesitated for a minute before getting up to join her…and then he almost fell over.

"Whoa!" she caught his arm and kept him from collapsing into the mud and took hold of his little umbrella. "Lose feeling in your legs?"

"No," he muttered. "I…I can't turn the Sharingan off, so it keeps drawing on my chakra."

"So you risk chakra exhaustion just by seeing," she frowned.

"Yes," he nodded sluggishly.

She gnawed at her lip thoughtfully before getting struck by a flash of inspiration. "Close your eyes," she instructed and balanced the pole of the umbrella on her shoulder, freeing up her hand.

The boy eyed her warily before complying. Kushina grasped the blue fabric of his hitae-ate and tugged it down over his scarred left eye, creating a make-shift eye-patch. Not only would it keep the Sharingan closed and drawing on much less chakra, but it would keep the Uchiha in the dark about it for a little while longer.

"There you go," she grinned, "how's that?"

He cracked open his right eye and glanced around with it. "It's…okay."

"Sure it kills your depth perception, but I'm sure that you can work around that." She flashed him an encouraging smile. "And it cuts down on the chakra drain, right?"

"Yes," he nodded slowly. "I…Uzumaki-san, I thought that you didn't like me."

"It was more that I didn't like your attitude," she corrected. "You're not a bad kid. And I've always thought highly of your talent."

Kakashi ducked his head awkwardly in embarrassment. "Thank you, Uzumaki-san."

"Enough with the 'Uzumaki-san' stuff. Call me 'Kushina,' I promise that I won't be offended."

"Alright…Kushina-san."

"That's better!" she laughed and held the umbrella over his head. "Now let's get some lunch, eh?"

At his nod, she led the way to Ichiraku's for some nice bowls of hot ramen soup. And after that, she probably would track down Rin and see how she was doing. She'd already worked on two broken pieces of Team 7, she might as well take care of the third piece too…


	5. Blood on the Snow

**Chapter 5:**_ Blood on the Snow_

Snow was rare in the Land of Fire. Even in the coldest months of winter, it rarely fell and even more rarely did it stick around for a while. In Minato's lifetime he could only recall five or six instances where snow lasted more than a few days. And now, in the depths of war, there was one more stretch when the snow lasted.

For two weeks conditions had been perfect for snow. And it ended up snowing a lot. Nearly a full foot of snow had fallen so far and the snow drifts could be nearly three feet deep in places. The way it changed the landscape was interesting, even beautiful, but he really could've done without it.

The cold weather forced him to swap out his usual ninja sandals for closed-toe boots. He wore a heavy dull tan cape for extra warmth and gloves on his hands to keep his fingers from getting numb. And to top it all off he had a dark blue scarf wrapped around his neck and lower part of his face to protect it from icy windburn.

Clenching his jaw in determination, he bounded through the trees at the head of a squad of other jounin ninja. Their mission was to investigate a possible intrusion on the border and run some war patrols in the area for a week or so before returning to the village for a day or two of rest. And then he'd get a new mission and it would start all over again.

It was the relentless grind of war, and Minato hated it. He was sick of all the death and the endless missions where it was kill or be killed. War had taken Obito away and countless others, and he was beyond tired of it. He was just about ready to do anything to make it stop.

In fact, he had a plan in mind. It was a variation on his _Hiraishin no Jutsu_. He was working on a way to shrink and modify the seals that the jutsu employed so that they were small enough to fit around a kunai handle. The idea he had was to turn those seal-wrapped kunai into homing beacons, turning his instantaneous teleporting jutsu into something he could use offensively. Once he got it right, it would turn him into a killing machine, but if it put an end to the war it would be worth all the blood.

Glancing over his shoulder, he briefly eyed his squad-mates. He didn't know any of them particularly well. The main reason that they'd been paired with him was because they were fast, hopefully fast enough to keep up with him as, even without his _Hiraishin_, he was one of the fastest ninja in all of Konoha. They seemed competent enough and barring some catastrophe they should do alright.

Readjusting the scarf around his face, he picked up the pace a little. The sooner they got near the border, the sooner they could get started, and the sooner their patrol would be over. And then they could go home and maybe enjoy the snow (if it was still around) instead of cursing it…

* * *

Kushina remained upright by sheer force of will. The three chuunin that she'd been teamed with for this particular mission—one of which happened to originally be from Uzu—were all dead. Three of the enemy squad were dead too. That just left her and the enemy leader.

_Just great…_

It was supposed to have been a quick, simple escort mission to get some supplies to a military outpost near the border. The risk was fairly low for a wartime mission, that was why she was the only jounin, and the chuunin she'd been working with were newly promoted. But no mission was routine, as this lovely fiasco had proven.

They'd been ambushed by an Iwa squad that had slipped past the border and one chuunin had died instantly. She sent the wagons ahead and had her shaken teammates engage the enemy with the aim to at least maim their opponents. Thankfully they'd done more than maim them, but at a steep price.

_Let's go!_

Clasping her hands in the initial seal, she gathered her mostly depleted reserves and started running through the sequence. Her side ached, as did her left leg and right shoulder. A kunai had been stabbed into her leg, a shuriken was still lodged in the back of her shoulder where she couldn't quite reach it, and her side had been grazed by a razor sharp spike of earth generated by a _Doton_ jutsu. The snow around her boots was slushy with mud and blood.

Her opponent started his own sequences of seals, flashing through them with devastating speed. He wasn't much better off than she was. There was a nasty gash on his head that let blood dribble into his eyes and he'd hurt his ankle, minorly impairing his mobility. She thought that he might also have a few broken ribs, but he bore pain well so it was hard to tell.

He finished his seals first and more teeth of stone erupted from the ground.

She lunged up and back still forming her seals with her gloved fingers while she dodged the earthen spikes that tried to skewer her. Every movement was difficult and sent surges of agony racing through her as her abused body protested her careless treatment of it. But she persevered and finished her sequence with a triumphant yell.

Earlier one of her now-dead chuunin had used a fiery _Katon_ jutsu which had melted patches of snow as a side-effect. Now she used the puddles to her advantage. The chakra that she'd spent the last minute molding with her hand seals rushed into that water and shaped it into her attack.

A serpentine dragon formed entirely of water coalesced behind her, drawing some slush and un-melted snow into itself to add to its destructive mass. It roared with the sound of rushing water, baring water-formed teeth as it rose higher and higher. And then at her mental command it lunged forward, snaking around the spikes of earth to slam into the lame Iwa-nin and either crush him or drown him…or both.

Her devastating _Suiton_ attack hit its mark and when the foaming water cleared her foe lay broken like a drowned rag doll.

"Eat that you bastard!" she wheezed and flashed the corpse a rude hand gesture.

She hated having to kill people. It was nasty and mean and she'd much rather take them prisoner and let someone else decide what to do with them. But this was war and unless otherwise stated all enemies were to be killed or at least severely maimed on sight. So she killed.

Sucking in a ragged breath she turned and started to limp towards the military outpost. There should be medic-nin there. They'd patch her up and then send her back to the village. And then she could curl up in her apartment for a few weeks without worrying about working. It would be like a vacation…just that she'd feel like crap most of the time.

Every step was a study in pain. Every breath made her head swim with agony. Every twitch of her shoulder made her clench her teeth against whimpers of discomfort. It was going to be a long, long walk.

Tiny snowflakes began to drift down from the grey heavens and add to the thick layer of snow already present. Snow was supposed to be rare here, but with all the snow this winter it was hard to tell. She wished that it didn't decide to snow so much this year; it made it so much harder to walk.

Sticky, heavy snow clung to her boots and sucked down her feet with each step. The crunchy top crust of snow threatened to trip her constantly. And even though it wasn't particularly windy, it was so damn cold.

_…Keep moving… Damn it's cold… Keep moving… Damn it's cold…_

Weariness seeped in with the cold. Gray edged in at the corners of her vision. But she ignored it and pressed on. She really was sick of the cold.

Dots danced before her eyes and suddenly she found herself half-slumped against a tree trunk. Kushina rubbed irritably at her eyes and pushed off the tree to continue. And then promptly tripped over a hidden root and crashed into the snow.

_Ow… Cold… Damn it…_

She tried to push herself up to continue, but white-hot lances of pain stabbed inward from her side wound and she crumpled again. After a few more failed attempts she poked at her side and hissed. Her fingers came back covered in blood.

"Shit," she wheezed. "Guess 'm bleedin' to death."

Sucking in a deep breath, she lurched upright and clung to the tree trunk while she fought the need to black out. Once the world stopped spinning she pressed on, pressing against the slash in her side in a belated attempt to prevent her demise. Laying down and dying was not something that she was going to do if she could help it.

_Keep going, Kushina… Keep going…_

_…So cold…_

* * *

Minato sprinted through the trees, pausing every half-mile to stretch out his senses for intruders or anomalies. It was a tedious, unpleasant task, one made harder by the cold and the fact that in less than twenty-four hours he'd be free to return to the village. Pulling his cloak tighter against the wind, he pushed on, intent on finishing up his patrol.

He had plans for his free time back in the village. He'd been meaning to do it for weeks now, but scheduling problems had prevented it from working out. Either he was just getting back from a mission or just leaving for one, or she was. But this time he had a feeling that it would work out. He intended to treat Kushina to lunch (or dinner, it didn't really matter which).

They'd eaten together plenty of times before. Thankfully the only time he'd ever had to pay for what she ate was the "favor date" years ago. All the times after that she'd just shown up where he was eating or had already been there before he arrived, and she paid for her own meal. But this time he would once again willingly bankrupt himself, and gladly this time.

Even though she'd demanded nothing in return for taking care of him after he'd had his little breakdown at the bar after Obito's death, he felt the need to do something for her in return. She'd not only taken care of him then, but he later learned that she helped out Kakashi and Rin too. And ever since his student's tragic death a few months before, she'd continued to offer him and his remaining students support.

After a hard mission, or just a bad day, he'd find himself on her doorstep. If she was home (and until recently she usually was), he'd spend some time with her, lounging on the floor by her bed while she would poke him or mess up his hair and tell him stories of her childhood in Uzu. He admired her ability to talk about people that she'd lost on a land that she'd never see again with a smile on her face. She was a comforting distraction and he didn't want to think what dealing with Obito's death would've been like without her.

So to show his appreciation, he'd buy her a meal, whatever she liked. He thought of other things, like flowers, but none of them really seemed to fit. It was hard to imagine her appreciating flowers or chocolates like other women would. But he knew that she liked food and paying for all the ramen that she could eat would make her day. As soon as he decided on that course of action, he saved as much of his paychecks as he could in preparation.

_I can't wait for this patrol to be over. Aside from those faint trails we found a few days ago that led nowhere, nothing has happened. …I hope Kushina-san is in town when I get back. I—_

"Hold on there, Minato-taichou!"

Minato hit the brakes and came to a stop several trees beyond the rendezvous point. Several points along the patrol routes were set up ahead of time for the team to meet up and compare notes. He'd just overshot the second-to-last one and he wouldn't have realized it if a teammate hadn't yelled at him. Sheepishly he backtracked to perch on a branch near the jounin who'd called out to him.

"Sorry, Taichi," he muttered, embarrassed. "The snow really throws me off sometimes." It was a pale excuse, and he had no doubts that his older teammate would see straight through it.

"I'm sure," Taichi snorted. "So did you see anything?"

"No," Minato sighed and pulled the scarf away from his mouth for a moment. "Did you see anything?"

"No."

There was a long pause, and then Taichi smirked. "So, who is she?"

Minato started. "Huh?"

"Who is she?" Taichi asked again, smirking wider.

"Who is who?" Minato frowned.

"That girl that you were daydreaming about."

Minato was quite taken aback, and wondered if Taichi had some Yamanaka blood in him…or had somehow picked up one of their mind-based jutsus. "How did you know that I was thinking about Kushina-san?"

"Young men always get distracted when they think about their pretty girlfriends," Taichi chuckled.

"G-girlfriend?!" Minato choked. "She's not my girlfriend!"

"Not yet, huh?" Taichi leaned back against the tree trunk and gave him a lazy smile. "Better make your move soon. If the war doesn't take her away, some other man will."

"She's not my girlfriend!" Minato insisted and loosened the scarf around his neck further. "We're colleagues and good friends. That's it."

Taichi shrugged carelessly. "Whatever you say."

Minato scowled and stared out into the snow-covered trees as he waited for the other two jounin on the team to arrive. The idea that he and Kushina-san were an item was ridiculous! They were friends, good friends, and he wasn't about to mess things up with some crazy idea of a romance with her. It would never work.

The second jounin arrived and had nothing to report. But when the third and final team member arrived, Minato knew something was up before the man even opened his mouth. The shinobi looked tense and ran right up to them at top speed.

"Midway through my route I thought I sensed some spiking chakra," he announced without preamble. "I deviated to investigate and found the remains of a battle. I need help searching it; it's spread over a fairly wide area."

"Right," Minato nodded sharply. "Let's go!"

Quietly they fell in behind their comrade as he led them to the battle site. Minato cursed silently the turn of events. Searching a battle site was almost guaranteed to turn up at least one dead body, probably more, and it was always a grim, depressing task. But at least it broke the monotony of the patrol.

The battle site started along one of the paths used to carry supplies to some of the border outposts, so it had probably been an ambush on a wagon convoy. The ninja escort had clearly fought back and taken the fight away from the path and into the denser trees closer towards the border. And while there was little sign that indicated that the civilian transport wagons had been harmed, it was clear early on that the ninjas involved had suffered casualties.

They found a Konoha chuunin first, mangled and barely recognizable. Following the trail of damage, they came across several other corpses. The count can to four Iwa-nin, probably high-level chuunin to low-level jounin, and three Konoha-nin, all chuunin and all young. Whoever rounded out the Konoha squad was missing.

"There's a trail here," Taichi muttered, tracing faint spots of blood in the snow with his eyes. "Looks like he trudged off this way, injured."

"I'll follow it," Minato decided. "The rest of you make sure that there are no signs of any surviving enemies and destroy the bodies after you pick them clean. We meet up at the outpost when we're done."

"Yes, sir!" they agreed with sharp nods.

Minato caught on to the blood trail and left his subordinates to their tasks. The lone survivor had either been wounded badly enough to prevent taking to the trees to escape, or was out of chakra, as the dribbles of blood ran through slogging footprints in the snow. The light snow which had been falling for nearly half an hour was slowly covering the trail, but it should last long enough for him to follow it to its conclusion.

_Looks like he hurt his leg,_ he mused as he studied the tracks. _One foot is definitely dragging. And at least one freely bleeding injury, maybe more._ He jogged along the blood trail, careful not to lose it. _The freshest signs of battle look to be about an hour old. Hopefully whoever this is can hold out against the cold and blood loss long enough… I'm not in the mood to find another corpse._

The trail started out fairly straight, leading in the direction of the outpost and medical help. But the further he followed it, the more erratic it became. It bounced from tree to tree and in several places it looked like someone had fallen. Ominously, some blood pooled in those places, showing about how long the victim spent laying there before moving on.

And then he found the end of the trail down on top of a frozen creek. A small figure lay sprawled there, covered by a winter cloak nearly identical to his own and a light dusting of snow. There was a lot of red and at first he thought it was all blood. But then he realized that most of it was hair—

"Kushina?!"

There was no response.

In half a heartbeat he was crouching down beside her, fumbling with his gloves and desperately searching for a pulse. Her skin was ice cold, but he did manage to feel a faint, fluttery pulse at her neck. His hands ghosted over her still form, finding a jagged puncture in her leg, a gash in her side, and a shuriken still lodged in her shoulder, along with miscellaneous cuts and bruises. He shook her and whispered her name over and over, but her eyelids barely flickered.

"Hold on, Kushina!" he murmured as he carefully cradled her cold, limp form against his chest. "I'll get you out of here; just hold on a little bit longer."

Gathering his chakra, he focused on the seal he'd set at the outpost, formed an awkward hand seal, and they vanished in a flare of yellow light…


	6. Wake Up Call

**Chapter 6:**_ Wake-Up Call_

When Kushina finally drifted back to the land of the living…she found herself in a hospital. She immediately missed the snowy forest that she'd collapsed in. It smelled a whole lot better out there. And there were fewer needles (pine needles didn't count).

Her eyes sluggishly roamed the little room that she'd been stashed in. It wasn't one of the semi-nice private rooms; she had to share the place with up to six other bodies with only lame shower curtains for privacy. Her curtain was mostly drawn, limiting what she could see.

The only thing of interest to look at was Namikaze, who sat slumped next to her bedside in one of those horrendously uncomfortable plastic chairs. He sat barely upright, parallel to her bed, staring blankly ahead at the empty bed across the room from her. There were shadows under his eyes, giving her the impression that he'd just gotten back from a nasty mission, and it looked like he was sleeping with his eyes half-open.

It was touching that he'd come to see her in the hospital when he was clearly so tired. It really was. She appreciated it entirely. But she just couldn't resist the temptation to jab him in the sensitive spot on his side (that she'd found quite by accident nearly a year before), which caused him to flop out of his seat like a fish out of water.

"Gah!" he choked from the floor.

She laughed, or at least tried to. It came out as more of a wheezy giggle than anything else. And what little energy she possessed quickly waned, leaving her panting quietly.

_Ugh, it's worse than I thought… Damn my anemia!_

"Kushina?" Namikaze peered over the bedrails blearily at her.

"What happened to my honorific?" she asked hoarsely with an arched eyebrow. "I'm not 'Kushina-_san_' anymore?"

Pink flooded his cheeks. "I-I-I—"

"Relax!" she snorted and feebly waved a hand at him. "I don't care."

He groaned and rested his forehead against the metal rail.

"Am I back in Konoha?" she asked once her amusement died down.

"Yes," he mumbled.

"Good." Her hand fought valiantly against the evil forces of gravity just long enough to pat his spiky yellow hair. "Now that you've visited me, you can go home and get some sleep 'cause you look like crap."

"How are you feeling?" he asked, ignoring her suggestion and settling himself back into the plastic chair.

"Tired…sore…but I promise I'll live."

"Please don't say things like that," Namikaze muttered stiffly. "I was the one who found you out there…" His knuckles blanched white as he squeezed the bedrail with a death grip. "You looked very dead, then."

"Oh," she blinked in surprise. "Well, thanks for the save. But you shouldn't have worried so much. Shinigami-sama himself will have to drag me kicking and screaming to the afterlife when the time comes, I promise."

"Don't joke about this!" he snapped, jumping abruptly to his feet, his blue eyes blazing.

_Wow!_ Her eyes widened. _I think I've actually made him angry. That hasn't happened since…since we were genin!_

"Minato," she rested her hand on top of his hand which still grasped the bedrail with a death-grip. "Calm down. I'm fine. Now go home and get some sleep, you'll feel a lot better."

He actually fixed her with a glare—with killer intent and everything!—before storming off and leaving her alone.

Kushina blinked at the empty place that he'd just occupied. _Huh. He turns into a giant crab when he doesn't get enough sleep. I must make note of this for the future._

_Still, it was really nice of him to come see me._ She smiled faintly and settled for what was going to be a long and painfully boring hospital stay. _When I get out of here I have to find something nice to do for him for saving my butt and putting up with me when he's so tired…_

_He's such a sweetheart._

* * *

Minato bared his teeth in a silent snarl as he angrily paced the fenced-in rooftop of Konohagakure's main hospital.

_How can she joke about that?! How?! She almost died and she thinks it's funny?!_

Hissing curses under his breath—surprising himself with just how many he knew—he agitatedly weaved his way through the lines of drying bed-linens. Days of endless worry and poor sleep had him rattled and irritable. The last functioning fragment of his rational mind pointed out that he was overreacting, but the rest of his brain ignored it.

_Damn that woman!_

The days after he'd found her sprawled in the snow had been a sort of waking nightmare. He couldn't quite get the image of her, so cold and still, out of his head, and his sleep was plagued by nightmares. Shortly after getting her to the medics at the border outpost, he'd had to return to Konoha as his shift at the front was over. She'd had to remain there for a few days as her condition was too fragile for her to be moved. The instant that she arrived back in the village he'd been drawn to her side like a magnet. And when she finally woke up, the first thing she did was make light of the whole mess and send him off to bed like a crabby toddler in need of a nap.

_Why did I even bother worrying?_ he growled to himself, tugging at his hair in frustration. "Damn her!"

"Woman troubles?" a positively gleeful voice asked.

Minato flinched and glanced up at the chain-link fence to find his sensei perched on top of it, grinning madly. "Go away," he scowled.

"Oh don't say that!" Jiraiya pouted. "I can help you, you know. Women are my specialty!"

"Leave me alone," Minato groaned and scrubbed tiredly at his face.

"Who is she and what happened?" Jiraiya asked and hopped down from the fence to stand beside him. "Tell me everything and I will help you fix it!"

"It's nothing like that, sensei," Minato huffed and leaned against the fence. "It's not what you think at all."

"Well then what is it?"

Minato glared at the fluttering white sheets pinned to the clotheslines. "Kushina woke up."

"Oh." Jiraiya's interest immediately died down from intense to mild. "What did she do this time?"

"She acted like almost dying was no big deal and told me to go home and go to bed like she'd my mother or something."

"Well, you certainly look tired," Jiraiya pointed out neutrally.

"Because I've barely slept for three days!" Minato snapped in frustration. "I was so worried, and she just…just—"

"Calm down, Minato." Jiraiya patted his shoulder. "I think I'm starting to get the picture here. So she treated her near-death experience like it was nothing… That seems like a very Kushina thing to do."

"Yeah," Minato grumbled sourly, "I suppose…"

"And she tried sending you home because you're half-dead on your feet… Another Kushina-ish thing to do."

Minato shrugged. "Yeah…"

"It certainly sounds like she's on the mend to me," Jiraiya remarked after a moment's thought. "Considering how worried you were, shouldn't you be relieved instead of angry?"

"I—"

At first he'd been tired, and then Kushina's casual attitude had made him angry, but now that he'd cooled down he _did_ feel relieved. _She was going to be okay!_ The invisible knot that had formed in his chest when he'd found her half-dead uncoiled and he drowned in the sensation of relief as he slumped down on the roof.

"I'm tired…"

"I can see that," his old teacher chuckled. "Why don't you take Kushina's advice and go home and sleep? When you wake up, everything will be clearer. You might even see something you've been blind to until now!"

Minato squinted up at his teacher and wondered fuzzily at the man's odd grin. "Huh?"

Jiraiya dramatically wiped at a non-existent tear at the corner of his eye. "Oh, it seemed like only yesterday that you first became my student. You just grew up so fast!"

Scowling, Minato decided that he didn't care to know what his old sensei was babbling on about and flashed away with his _Hiraishin_ to his apartment. While Jiraiya acted like an immature idiot who only cared about hot women, booze, and sex, Minato knew that his sensei was far smarter than he let on. The Sannin possessed incredible observational skills (mostly used for peeping, unfortunately) which made him a talented spy for the village and gave him the ability to read people and their intentions much better than most shinobi. Sometimes he even caught on to things about people that they themselves were unaware of…

_What the hell was that?_ Minato wondered with a yawn as he stumbled towards his bedroom. _Might even see something that I've been blind to? …Maybe he drank some funky sake or something._

Stripping down to his shorts, he climbed into bed and felt sleep surging up to take him. He gladly surrendered to it. There would be no more nightmares…not about Kushina anyway.

_She's going to be okay…_

* * *

Kushina woke from a light doze to find that she had two new visitors. Namikaze's darling students, Rin and Kakashi, stood by her bedside. Rin was cheerfully arranging a small bouquet of flowers on her little nightstand table and Kakashi just looked vaguely bored…though it was hard to tell with that damn mask that he always wore.

"Flowers?" Kushina rasped with a little smile. "For me?"

"Of course, Kushina-san!" Rin smiled. "I'm surprised that sensei didn't bring you any. He was so worried about you."

"He was like a zombie," Kakashi commented.

"A zombie, you say?" Kushina raised a red eyebrow. "Did he ask to eat your super-smart brains, Kakashi?"

The boy scowled. "No, of course not."

"Kakashi," Kushina sighed wearily, "do me a big favor and grow a sense of humor, will you?"

"Please be serious," Kakashi countered. "You almost died, you know."

Kushina blinked in exaggerated astonishment and whispered: "What is this? Concern? For _me_? Kakashi, I'm touched!"

"Not it's not," Kakashi protested (unconvincingly). "If you die, then sensei will break."

"Don't be so dramatic," Kushina scoffed. "Sure if I died he'd be upset, but break him? Nope. Don't see that happening."

"Kushina-san!" Rin gasped. "You mean a lot to sensei! It would break his heart if you died!" The girl wrung her hands in distress.

Kushina shrugged stiffly. "Why don't we talk about something else, eh?"

"Something less morbid, please," Rin squeaked.

"Sure," Kushina agreed. "So how have you kiddies been?"

"I've been okay," Rin shrugged, scuffing her sandals against the tile floor.

"Decent," was Kakashi's terse answer.

There was a long pause.

"Well this is boring," Kushina grumbled. "Maybe we should talk about death again."

"No, no, no!" Rin waved her hands frantically. "Let's not! I don't want to think about you dying, Kushina-san."

"Aw, that's so sweet," Kushina smiled faintly. "Thanks."

"Please try to avoid coming so close to death again," Kakashi muttered stiffly.

"Yeah, I'll do my best not to defend against ambushes. Next time I'll just run away when the Iwa-nin pop up," Kushina snorted dryly. "That'll work out great."

Kakashi glared at her. "That's not what I meant."

"Loosen up kid," Kushina advised. "You're wound so tight that sometimes I worry that you might break." She eyed him speculatively, then burst out into wheezy giggles as a hilarious mental image hit her.

"What's so funny?" Rin asked curiously.

"I just thought of what Kakashi would be like if he was completely opposite of how he is now," Kushina snickered.

"Oh?" Kakashi frowned. "What would I be like, then?"

"You'd be laid-back, always late, full of excuses, and…" her eyes took on an evil glint. "And you'd read porn…all the time!"

"I'll never be like that!" Kakashi snapped with a shudder.

"Never say never, Kakashi!" Kushina teased. _It could be true…in some twisted alternate universe, maybe._

"I'm leaving," Kakashi growled and stalked off.

"Bye," Kushina waved.

"I should go too," Rin muttered and started to leave.

"If you catch your sensei not sleeping again, slip some sedatives into his drink," Kushina commanded.

Rin looked appalled. "Kushina-san! I couldn't—"

"If he won't take care of himself, someone has to," Kushina winked. "And as a medic-in-training, your sensei's health is your job!"

"I-I guess," Rin hedged nervously. "Good-bye, Kushina-san!" The girl jogged off, presumably to catch up with Kakashi. "Kakashi-kun, wait up!"

"Borderline fan-girl," Kushina sighed, feeling ridiculously drained from doing nothing. She glanced over at the flowers that the kids had brought her and grinned faintly. "How nice…it doesn't smell like a nasty hospital anymore."

* * *

Minato woke up around noon the next day and felt a lot better. After a nice long shower, he felt even more clear-headed. And then he remembered what happened the day before.

"I…I freaked out on Kushina-san in the hospital yesterday…" He hung his head, quite ashamed of himself. "Oh no…"

_Why did I do that? I should've given her a hug instead of biting her head off. …I hope she's not mad about that._

He gulped anxiously and started digging through his cabinets for some breakfast…er, lunch. Just as he fished out a cereal box, he was stuck with a flash of inspiration. Grinning, he shoved the box back into his cabinet and sprinted out of his apartment.

_I know how to apologize!_

When he reached the little noodle stand, he ordered a few take-out cartons of beef ramen. As soon as his order was filled, he made his way to the hospital roof. If he went through the front doors with his soup, the nurses would either confiscate it or send him away. There was far less chance of getting caught if he slipped into the building by the roof.

It was a strange experience, he reflected as he smuggled in the ramen. Normally he felt guilty when he willfully did something that he knew was against the rules, or at least questionable. But right at this moment he didn't care at all.

After a few close calls, he reached the room where Kushina rested. There was only one other shinobi kept in that room, but he was stashed in the bed in the far corner and quite asleep, so Minato promptly ignored him. Kushina was propped up in bed and eying her hospital lunch distastefully.

_Perfect!_

"Hello, Kushina-san!" he smiled nervously and settled himself in the plastic chair from the day before.

She eyed him warily for a moment. "Did you get some sleep, like I told you to?"

"Yes," he nodded and dropped his gaze to the floor. "I…I'm sorry about yesterday. I—"

"Don't worry about it," she waved weakly. "It was actually kind of funny—reminded me of the good-old genin days."

Minato frowned a little. "What, back when we hated each other?"

"Hate is such a strong word." She fiddled with her bed-sheet. "You just…annoyed me. And I did quite enjoy picking fights with you."

He didn't know what to say to that, so he offered her most of the take-out containers of ramen. "Uh…here!"

She stared at the cardboard containers with the stand's name emblazoned on them with wide eyes. Then she slowly turned her gaze over to him and regarded him gravely. "Namikaze Minato, you are my hero."

Minato beamed so broadly at her that his eyes were squeezed shut and he felt himself flush with pleasure. "You're very welcome, Kushina-san!" he laughed a little and scratched at the back of his head.

"Enough with the '-san,' Namikaze," she snorted as she cracked open the first container. "You did just fine without it yesterday."

"K-Kushina," he swallowed hard and his face felt warmer. "Why do you always use my family name? You can use my first name if-if you want."

"Duly noted Namikaze," she grinned and stuffed some noodles into her mouth.

He chuckled weakly and also started to eat. While she her best to inhale the soup in spite of her lingering weakness, he took his time. As he watched her eat, he noticed a bunch of flowers by her bed and frowned slightly.

"Who brought you the flowers?"

Kushina paused and then swallowed her current mouthful before answering. "Your darling students brought them. They help hide the nasty hospital smell."

"Oh?" He felt oddly relieved. "Rin and Kakashi came by?"

"Yeah, an hour or so after you left yesterday…I think." She shrugged and took a few more bites. "Kakashi said you were like a zombie, and I asked him if you tried to eat his awesome brains…" She sighed. "That kid has no sense of humor!"

Minato winced. "Yeah, I was pretty out of it."

"Why?"

He looked up at her, startled. "Huh?"

"Why were you out of it?" She frowned a little, brows furrowed in confusion. "You're not the kind of guy who gets rattled easily. What happened?"

"It was…I just couldn't get that image of you laying in the bloody snow out of my head," he shrugged. "I called your name, but you didn't even twitch, and you were so cold… It was like you were dead." He shook his head. "I just couldn't shake it, no matter how hard I tried." Minato smiled weakly at her. "I'm glad that you're feeling better, Kushina."

To his surprise, she actually blushed a little and looked away briefly. "Geeze, I'm really sorry for freaking you out like that…"

"It's alright." He slipped his hand through the bed-rail and gently grasped her hand.

She looked up at him with a faint, gentle smile. "You're such a sweetheart, Minato."

His breath caught in his throat and his heart seemed determined to leap out of his chest. _I—She—! I…I…I—_

_…Wow._


	7. Resistance and Denial

**Chapter 7: **_Resistance and Denial_

Minato sat on the edge of his apartment windowsill and gazed out at this view of the village. The snow was finally melting, but slowly as it was still the dead of winter. He really didn't notice the slushy puddles and dripping icicles though; his mind was firmly…elsewhere.

_…Wow._

Intellectually, he'd know that she was a woman. That she was pretty. That she could be nice. But…

_"You're such a sweetheart, Minato."_

_He gaped like a fish and his face felt hot. "Uh-um…"_

_Her smile turned mischievous. "Oh my…am I embarrassing you? __**Minato-kun**__?"_

_"What?! I—" He lurched back in his seat, face burning. "N-no!"_

_"I'm sorry," she giggled, completely unrepentant. "Thank you very much for lunch. And for putting up with me."_

_"Y-you're welcome," he gulped and tried desperately to calm his racing heart and cool his flushed face. "H-how long will you have to stay here?"_

_"The doctors say a week, a week and a half maybe." Kushina pouted. "Way too long."_

_"Oh."_

_"But you'll come and visit me, right?"_

_Her wide, green-flecked eyes were strangely mesmerizing, as was her small hopeful smile. Even though she'd been through a deadly battle and gone many days in the hospital without a real shower or hairbrush, she looked so beautiful. His mouth went dry and he thought about leaning over and k—_

"So how'd it go?"

Minato yelped and jumped away from his window to find—

"Jiraiya-sensei?!"

"Well?" the white-haired man asked, leaning against Minato's fridge. "Judging by your face I'd say that it went well…"

Minato wanted to die. "Nothing happened!"

"Oh?" Jiraiya frowned. "What were you daydreaming about just now, eh?"

"That is none of your business!" Minato snapped and strode across the room to his beat-up couch.

"Besides 'nothing,' what happened on your little visit with her?" Jiraiya inquired while he turned to raid the fridge.

"I brought her lunch, we talked a little, and I left," Minato growled tensely. "That's it."

"What did you talk about?" Jiraiya fished out some old leftovers and cracked open the container to inspect the contents. "Anything juicy?"

"Nothing like that. Just how she was feeling and when were they going to release her."

"Did you plan any dates?"

"No!" Minato choked. "Why would we do that?"

"I dunno, maybe because you get along well with her, enjoy her personality and good qualities, and you find her attractive—"

"No I don't!" Minato sputtered.

Jiraiya raised a curious eyebrow. "So you think she's ugly."

"No! She's…she looks…fine." Minato fixed his old teacher with a stern look. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Just 'fine,' huh?" Jiraiya found some chopsticks somewhere and started eating whatever he'd found. "So has she found herself a boyfriend yet?"

"What?" Minato frowned. "No, what sort of question is that?"

"Just curious." Jiraiya paused to twirl his chopsticks. "A pretty girl like her…sooner or later she'll attract someone. If not you, then someone else for sure."

Minato clenched his teeth and wondered just why his old sensei was needling him about this. "So what if she finds someone? It's not any of my business if she does or not."

"And you won't be the least bit jealous when she does pick up a boyfriend?" Jiraiya asked with a smirk.

"Nope," Minato answered with a firm shake of the head.

All trace of teasing left his teacher's face. "What are you so afraid of?"

Minato scowled and flopped back on his couch. "What are you talking about?"

"The worst thing that she'll do to you is not return your feelings, and then you can still stay friends with her. It might be a bit awkward for a while, but it's not the end of the world."

He stared at his mentor incredulously and ignored the vague queasy sensation that twisted his insides. "What are you going on about, sensei?"

"Quit playing stupid, Minato; you're too smart to pull it off," Jiraiya admonished. "Now think of it this way: There's no reward without a little risk. If you don't take the chance, you'll never get anywhere. Now go buy her some flowers!"

"Rin already bought her flowers," Minato sighed, glowering at his teacher.

"Well then get her chocolates or a stuffed animal."

"I've already smuggled her in some ramen, which she appreciates more than chocolates, and…a stuffed animal?" Minato tried to picture her cuddling a teddy bear with any amount of enthusiasm and failed.

The older man chewed on Minato's leftovers thoughtfully. "Maybe if you found her a toy Summon animal with a knife…"

"Just give it up, sensei," Minato muttered. "She's not one for gifts."

"Well then as soon as she's feeling better, take her out to eat!"

"She'll bankrupt me," Minato protested, purposely ignoring how he'd been planning on taking her out to eat before she'd been hurt.

"That's a small price to pay for love, my boy!" Jiraiya laughed.

Minato awkwardly tugged at his shirt collar and glared at the floor near his teacher's feet. "Knock it off, Jiraiya-sensei. And quit eating my food! Buy your own."

"But this would've gone to waste if I hadn't eaten it!" the Sannin protested. "And don't I get something in return for training you all these years?"

Minato rolled his eyes and put his hands into a seal. "Whatever, just don't empty out my fridge, okay?" And then he activated his _Hiraishin_ and warped out of his apartment before his uninvited guest could reply.

He reappeared near the top of the Hokage monument and walked out to stand on top of the giant head of the Shodai Hokage that was carved into the cliff face overlooking the village. It was bitingly cold and windy, but he didn't care. He'd come out here for the solitude, not for the temperature.

But even out in the cold on top of the stone head of the Shodai he couldn't escape _her_.

He thought of her as a rough-and-tumble tomboy genin. How she was so spirited, full of fire and more than a few insults. How she was always after him, always determined to show him up, always ready to make him bleed. How she acted so much like a boy, yet had been so hurt and insulted when he thought that she _was _a boy.

He thought of her on the disastrous fake-date that he'd unknowingly taken her on. How she'd rescued him and then broken his poor little wallet. How she'd hidden her identity until the very last moment. How she'd surely savored her little victory over him, and left him gaping while she walked away.

He thought of her standing on the pond that night, surrounded by lazily drifting fireflies. How she'd looked so unlike the Kushina that he was used to seeing. How still and peaceful and…and _pretty_ she was then. How much like some forest spirit she'd seemed, even as she left the water to stand on solid ground. How she tolerated his awkward presence without complaint, even as he trailed after her all the way back to her building.

He thought of her after Obito's death. How she fished him out of a bar, absolutely plastered, and let her sleep in her apartment—in her bed. How she put up with him when he was hung-over. How she let him cry all over her and never told a soul or looked at him with any less respect.

He thought of her and her friendly nature. How she would pop up, sometimes from seemingly thin air, and liven up his day, whether he really wanted her to or not. How she'd always hang on his arm or drape her arm over his shoulders or jump on his back. How, when he needed her to be quiet, she would. How she played around with him and played with his hair. How she made him laugh. How she made him smile.

He thought of her in the hospital. How she managed to look good even though she was recovering from a near-death experience. How she held on to her sense of humor, even when he didn't. How she lit up when he brought her Ichiraku ramen. How she'd called him sweet and he'd wanted to k—

Minato scrubbed a half-numb hand over his face and gazed blankly over the slush-covered village rooftops. _What am I going to do?_ he wondered morosely. _Why did this have to happen? And everything was going so well, too…_

An icy blast of wind hit him and he jammed his hands into his pockets with a weary sigh. He couldn't like her like that. He just couldn't! They had a great friendship, and this threatened to wreck it. The very thought of that made him shudder and ache inside.

_I need to get over this,_ he decided. _I need to bury it so deep that I forget all about it. We're good friends and that's what we're going to stay._

_Besides,_ he thought, recalling their antagonistic childhood,_ it's not like she feels the same way…_

* * *

Kushina boredly counted the tiny holes in the ceiling tiles over her hospital bed. She was tired, but not quite tired enough to pass out just yet. So she occupied her brain with mindless counting.

She was flirting with disaster. Namikaze was wonderful and she had a blast hanging out with him. But the more time that she spent with him, the more she fell under his spell. His smile, his laugh, his adorable social awkwardnesses—she adored it all.

And that was a problem. Liking led to loving which led to scary and unpleasant things like marriage, pregnancy, babies, and being a mother. That was not the future for her. She was a ninja, a kunoichi, a fighter and a killer. Her hands were too rough and bloody to bring up a child; too clumsy not to screw it up.

Therefore, she would never fall in love and never have children. She would die a kunoichi, alone, and probably a virgin. It was something that she'd decided on years before, and she refused to change her mind.

To hold true to this goal, she really should break everything off with Namikaze. She should put distance between them, find a new circle of friends, new hang-out places, and socially get a fresh start in Konoha. That would be the ideal solution.

But…her friendship with Namikaze felt so safe. He made her laugh (mostly when he didn't mean to), and smile, and feel happy. If she left him without any good reason, he'd be upset and she'd feel just awful about the whole thing.

_After I get through this hospital stay, I'll cut back on my "Minato time," _she decided. _Give us both a little breathing room, let things calm down._ Her mouth twitched into a shadow of a smile. _After all: All good things in moderation…_


	8. Jealousy

**Chapter 8: **_Jealousy_

Rin smiled cheerfully as she trailed after her sensei. He was taking her out to lunch—just him and her this time. In the beginning, it was a little tradition for all of Team 7 – herself, Kakashi, Obito, and Minato-sensei – to eat out together at least once a week, and always after a successful big mission. Then Uzumaki Kushina had appeared and would occasionally join them—on purpose or on accident.

But things were different now. The war raged, and Minato-sensei was busy a lot. Obito was dead. Kakashi was accepted into the ANBU training program and was even more busy than Minato-sensei. And Kushina had become increasingly scarce for a few months now—ever since she got back on active duty.

"Where would you like to eat, Rin?" her sensei asked with a kind smile.

"I haven't been to Ichiraku's in a while," she grinned shyly. "Could we go there?"

His smile stiffened a little. "Sure, ramen sounds nice."

"Great!"

Rin's motivation for visiting the noodle stand went beyond just lunch. It was a fact that Kushina favored Ichiraku's over all other eating establishments in Konoha. And with any luck the red-headed kunoichi would be there already or show up when they were eating.

She never thought that she would, but she missed the surprise appearances of the fiery kunoichi. The woman was loud, bold, borderline vulgar at times, and yet somehow strangely admirable. Kushina was strong and brave…and she was kind.

Rin remembered how the older kunoichi had taken care of everyone after the trauma of Obito's death. She didn't know the details of what she'd done for Kakashi and Minato-sensei, but she _had_ done something. Some of the tension and hints of grief that she'd seen in her jounin mentor had vanished after returning to the village, and she'd run into Kushina paying for Kakashi's lunch not long after.

The red-haired woman had then turned her focus to Rin. The rough-edged kunoichi had bluntly offered to go shopping with her, paint fingernails, play with hair, or do whatever "girly thing" Rin wanted to do for the day without complaint. Rin didn't want to force the older woman to participate in something she found unpleasant, so they found a compromise. They rented a couple movies and watched them at Kushina's apartment.

Kushina cheerfully gave her own running commentary for the movies, even startling a few laughs out of Rin. She'd felt awful about laughing with Obito being dead. After the little double-feature, the woman had worked to help her through that guilt. With a little prodding, she got Rin to start talking about it and she listened attentively, inserting her own thoughts and comments where necessary.

In the end, Rin felt somewhat better about the whole mess and ready to get on with things.

And not long after that little girl-bonding thing, Rin caught on to something. Kushina seemed to have a "thing" for her sensei. More interesting still, Minato-sensei seemed to have a "thing" for Kushina as well. And neither appeared to realize what the other felt.

When Rin realized this, she inwardly squealed. It was just like something right out of a romance tale. For a while she even considered playing match-maker for them…because they obviously needed it.

But unfortunately she had to discard that idea. She lacked skill with relationships and there was no way that she was going to screw this up. And there was a war going on—there just wasn't enough time.

Still, if there was a chance to get her sensei together with Kushina, she would do it. They made each other happy and it was fun to watch them. And if Kushina wasn't at Ichiraku's, the food was still good.

Rin was almost jumping with anticipation as the quaint little ramen stand came into view. Her sensei seemed tense and his pace seemed to slow as they drew nearer. She shrugged aside the odd hesitation and scampered ahead—

Kushina _was_ there…and she was in the company of a strange man.

He was a few inches shorter than Minato-sensei, with short dark hair, a neatly trimmed black goatee, and a two-inch-long diagonal scar on his left cheek. The stranger sat next to Kushina munching on ramen with her and chuckling at the punch-line of some joke. Kushina was grinning at him and didn't notice Rin skid into the small stand.

_Who…is that?_ She wondered worriedly.

"So, Rin, what would you…"

Rin turned to find Minato-sensei just past the flaps of the stand, staring blankly at Kushina and the stranger.

_Uh-oh…_

Kushina heard the aborted question and turned on her stool, blinking in surprise. "Hey, Namikaze! Rin! Come here for lunch?"

"Yes," Minato nodded.

"Excellent choice!" she laughed. "You remember Daichi, right?" she asked, gesturing at the stranger.

Rin's sensei frowned in concentration for a minute. "Yes, he's from Uzu, right?"

"Yep," the stranger – Daichi – nodded and waved. "Hey, how's it going?"

"Fine," Minato shrugged.

Daichi glanced down at Rin and grinned. "Hey there, cutie! Your name's Rin?"

"Yes," she gulped nervously.

"Come, sit down!" He waved cheerily at the nearby empty stools. "Have some noodles and swap some stories!"

"Yeah, yeah, sit down!" Kushina agreed.

Rin timidly shuffled over to sit beside Daichi, and Minato-sensei sat next to her. They placed their orders with the cook and mostly listened as Kushina and Daichi continued their conversation. And when their ramen was ready, Daichi regaled them with embarrassing tales of Kushina's childhood, much to said kunoichi's annoyance.

Even though there was a stranger present, Rin found the lunch to be a lot of fun. Daichi was nice and had a lot of good stories. Apparently he and Kushina had been on the same initial team as genin.

But as the meal progressed, Rin couldn't help but notice how her sensei reacted. He said very little and seemed to keep his distance from them all, even though he didn't move from his seat. And he gripped his chopsticks so tightly that he ended up snapping several pairs throughout the course of lunch.

_He's jealous,_ Rin thought as Minato paid for their two meals. _And upset. Maybe coming here wasn't such a good idea…_

* * *

Kakashi readjusted the cloth of his hitae-ate over Obito's eye as he respectfully followed his sensei to the training fields on the fringes of the village. With both of their busy schedules it was rare for them to have free time at the same time to train together. Today was one of those rare days.

Although training to be an ANBU took up most of his time, Kakashi didn't mind. Obito had always dreamed of getting into the ANBU. At least his eye would get to be, now. It was the least that Kakashi could do for his friend.

Minato-sensei understood. Kakashi felt that Rin understood, too. Neither had tried to talk him out of it when he told them of his acceptance into ANBU training.

He and his sensei navigated the different training fields, looking for an open one to train on. Most of the ones that they favored were already in use. And then they came to the second-to-last one on their list…

_Kushina-san?_ Kakashi frowned behind his mask as he peered through the dense foliage at a red-haired kunoichi training down in a clearing with…someone. _Who is that?_

Her training partner was a man that Kakashi was unfamiliar with. He was dark-haired, with dark eyes, and a small beard. Freeing up Obito's eye, he could tell that the woman _was_ Kushina with the Sharingan's superior vision. And she was having a lot of fun, too.

Then another man darted out of the trees to the left of the pair and joined in. This man had reddish-brown hair, was a little stockier, and wielded a pair of short swords with great precision. Kakashi watched the second man's swordsmanship for a little while, imprinting it with Obito's eye for further use later.

"Who said you could play, Hachiro?" Kushina laughed.

"I did!" the dark-haired man announced.

"Surprise!" Hachiro cackled and made a charge with his blades. "Hee-yah!"

Kushina deftly spun aside, blocking one of his stubby swords with a kunai. "Daichi, you sneak!"

The dark-haired one – Daichi – only chuckled and took a swipe at her legs.

As the three-way spar continued, Kakashi turned towards his sensei to see if he was ready to leave for the next training field. However, Minato-sensei seemed transfixed by the match going on below. His blue eyes followed every movement and his hands clutched at a branch like he was trying to strangle it.

With Obito's Sharingan, he could see every minute detail of his sensei's reaction. Kakashi couldn't help but note every narrowing of the eyes, muscle twitch, tiny frown, grind of the teeth, clenching of the fist…_everything_. And Kakashi was intrigued.

_Why is sensei so upset?_ he wondered as he covered Obito's eye as it began to throb from slight overuse. _It just looks like they're training down there. Nothing special, nothing dangerous…_

Below, the spar abruptly ceased as Daichi managed to pin Kushina on the ground. "Hah, I win!"

"Damn it!" Kushina panted. "Let me up!"

"Nope," he grinned.

"Daichi!" she growled warningly.

"Maybe if you kiss me…"

Even without using the Sharingan, Kakashi could read his sensei's reaction quite clearly. Every muscle in his sensei's body tensed and a feeling of killing intent began to leak off him. It was clear that he'd been keeping his emotions in check, but Daichi's request was obviously the last straw.

_Minato-sensei…is jealous?!_

"No way!" Kushina snarled. "Get off me before I make you cry!"

_Minato-sensei…likes __**her**__?!_

"Oh don't say things like that, Uzumaki-chan," Daichi pleaded. "It's just one little kiss."

_…Why?_

"Hachiro!" Kushina roared. "Get him off me before I neuter him!"

_Why is he so worked up? Kushina-san is clearly not into this Daichi person._

"Get off my many-times-removed cousin," Hachiro chuckled. "One little kiss is not worth your balls."

_…Kushina-san is crazy._

"What would you know, Hachiro?" Daichi sniffed, but finally did release Kushina from the ground. "You wouldn't know a pretty girl if you saw one; you're too busy drooling over other boys!"

_…So Hachiro isn't into her either._

"Your ass is mine!" Kushina declared and the fight was back on, but this time Hachiro sat on the sidelines and cheerfully heckled both combatants.

Kakashi turned and eyed his still tense sensei. "Are we done spying on your girlfriend yet?"

"She's not my girlfriend!" Minato hissed furiously and again Kakashi didn't need the Sharingan to see that his sensei wasn't being entirely truthful.

Kakashi's one visible eye crinkled with the smile hidden by his mask. "Whatever you say…"

* * *

Spring was the season of new love, Jiraiya believed. It was a time of renewal and fresh starts. Now if only his beloved student would take advantage of the time of the year and hook up with the object of his affection…

"What a wonderful evening for a drink!" Jiraiya laughed as he settled down at a small round table in his favorite tavern. "Don't you think so, Minato?"

His favorite student and apprentice glowered at him from across the small table. "Not really."

"What's with that gloomy face," Jiraiya snorted and poured them both glasses of sake. "Still drifting down that river of denial?"

"Did you have any particular reason for calling me here?" Minato grumbled.

"Can't I just catch up with my favorite student?" the Sannin asked with a pout. "We've both been so busy lately that we've barely seen each other, let alone talked."

"Fine," Minato shrugged and sipped at his drink. "Talk."

Jiraiya arched a white eyebrow. "What's got you so tense?"

"Nothing, I'm just a little tired."

The Sannin frowned thoughtfully. Minato usually managed to keep up a happy face unless something truly terrible had happened. And if that was the case, his student would've come to him for help, or he would've heard something about it. But as far as he knew, there was no reason for this sullen Minato.

"You need to get laid," Jiraiya decided. "If Kushina turns you down, I could set you up with a few very nice ladies that I know."

The blonde's face reddened. "I don't want anything to do with your hooker friends, sensei!"

"But Kushina's okay, eh?"

"No, I don't like her like that," Minato denied.

Jiraiya didn't believe him for a second. He glanced around the crowded, smoky establishment, eyeing the female denizens very appreciatively. He was about to point out a busty brunette to his lonely student when a splash of red caught his eye. Uzumaki Kushina of Uzu, his dear student's love interest, sat at a table near the bar…with three other young men.

One fit the mold of tall-dark-and-handsome rather well with a scar on is cheek and a black goatee on his chin. The second had red-brown hair, freckles, and a pair of short swords strapped to his back. And the third had scraggly dirty blonde hair and a black bar tattooed across his cheeks and over the bridge of his nose. All three were seasoned shinobi and all three seemed to know Kushina well.

"Huh," Jiraiya snorted. "I never thought she'd go for a foursome. Or could that be classified as a small orgy?"

"What?" Minato muttered. "Who are you—"

Jiraiya turned back to his student and found him tensed up and staring right at Kushina. _And he claimed that he wouldn't be jealous,_ the Sannin chuckled. "Don't they look cozy over there," he drawled.

Minato started and stubbornly looked away from her. "Those are her friends from Uzu. I met them once."

"Ah," Jiraiya nodded, enlightened. "Her _friends_."

"Back when I met them, they thought that she was a lesbian," Minato shrugged and nursed his sake.

"They certainly don't think that now," Jiraiya observed with a lecherous grin. "Tattoo Face can't seem to keep his hand off her leg."

Minato stiffened before refilling his glass. "I don't care."

"And it looks like Scar Face just whispered something naughty into her ear."

"I don't care."

"Swords really likes hanging on her shoulders…that's an excellent position for groping, you know."

"I'm not listening to you."

"She really looks like she's enjoying herself…"

"Good for her." Another full glass of sake.

"Ooh! She just kissed Swords on the cheek!"

"So what?"

"Hah! Tattoo Face's hand wandered too far and she smacked him good!"

Minato only growled.

"I wonder which one she'll take home with her."

No response.

"Swords would probably be a good one for foreplay—good with his hands I bet!"

Another glass of sake.

"Scar Face would be the all-around passionate lover."

Another growl.

"And Tattoo Face…he's all for hot, kinky, animal sex—"

"Shut up!" Minato snarled and jumped up, knocking back his chair and drawing a lot of startled stares.

Jiraiya calmly sipped at his drink. "What's wrong? I was only making speculations. And I thought you didn't care."

"I'm leaving," Minato growled and stormed out, weaving very slightly.

The Sannin knew his student very well and knew that it took a lot to get him to lose his temper that way. He felt rather guilty about provoking Minato so badly and was about to follow him when he noticed something interesting. Kushina's attention had been grabbed by Minato's flare of temper and she scampered after him before Jiraiya could even get up.

_Never mind,_ Jiraiya grinned and focused on his rice wine. _Spring is in the air, my dear student. Please take advantage of it!_

* * *

Minato stumbled and stubbed his toe as he angrily marched towards his apartment. As he clutched his throbbing foot and braced his back against a building to keep from falling over he cursed his sensei and the sake that he'd consumed. Usually when he was talked into drinking he nursed a few glasses over an hour or two. He'd just downed double his usual number of glasses in under a half an hour.

"Oi, Namikaze!"

He froze and looked up to see Kushina jogging up to him.

"What was that all about back there?" she asked with a concerned look. "Was the old perv talking dirty to you?"

Minato blinked stupidly at her. The sake and her sudden appearance conspired to scramble his brains. She had to repeat her question before he snapped out of his daze.

"Yeah," he nodded. "I…I'm s'rry if I bothered you leavin' like that."

"You're slurring a little bit there," she observed.

"I'm going home," he informed her and pushed off the wall, eager to escape her presence. He was buzzed enough from the alcohol to not trust himself around her.

"Stub your toe?" she asked, noting his slight limp as she followed him.

"Yeah," he sighed.

When he stumbled again, she caught his arm and held on to it for the rest of the walk. Minato guiltily luxuriated in the physical contact. It had been weeks since she'd last touched him.

Ever since she'd recovered from her injuries, it seemed like she'd been drifting away from him. It didn't help that he'd perfected his _Hiraishin_ and been sent on a lot of missions to slaughter enemies with it. But then he'd started seeing her hanging out with other people, old friends.

It was stupid, but it bothered him. He'd see her eating with someone, training with someone, hanging out with someone, and he wanted it to be him and not them. And it didn't help that a lot of her Uzu pals liked to get very touchy-feely with her…

"Here we are!"

Minato blinked in surprise to find that he had arrived at his own door. "Yeah," he muttered and groped around in his pockets for his key.

"Are you going to be alright?" she asked.

He nodded and fumbled a bit as he unlocked the door.

"I'm sorry that I haven't been hanging with you much lately," she apologized, making him pause. "But it's been a while since I've really spent time with them and they've been free a lot lately."

Minato managed a smile for her. "It's alright. I understand."

"Thanks," she grinned and patted his shoulder. "And just so you know, you're my favorite." And then she was gone.

He stood there for several minutes afterwards with a dazed smile on his face. _I'm her favorite? …Yeah._


	9. Fire Shadow

**Chapter 9: **_Fire Shadow_

Minato wandered aimlessly through the village streets. The sun had set a while ago and he had no idea what time it was. He was too stunned to do more than put one foot in front of the other and avoid walking into solid objects.

Earlier, the Sandaime Hokage had pulled him aside after giving his latest mission report. Minato had been worried, at first. The war with Iwa was finally winding down. The Tsuchikage was finally in talks with Konoha to put a formal end to the major hostilities. A period of peace looked to be on the horizon. But if the Hokage was taking him—Konoha's fabled Yellow Flash—aside…

It hadn't been bad news. It had in fact been very, very good news. So good, so amazing, that he was having trouble fully believing it. It was like a dream.

_"Yo, Sunshine! What kind of shinobi do you want to be when you grow up?"_

_"I want to be the best, of course," Minato huffed as he ran through a complete series of kicks and punches. "One day I will be Hokage."_

_There was a burst of raucous laughter. "Hokage?! Sure you're hot stuff now Namikaze, but _Hokage_?"_

_Minato paused between sets and glared in annoyance at the strange red-headed boy from Uzu sitting on a nearby training post. "I'll be Hokage one day," he repeated firmly. "It'll take years and I probably won't be the Yondaime, but I have a shot at Godaime. I _will_ be Hokage."_

_"Yeah, sure," the scruffy, dirty, ragamuffin boy snorted. "Whatever you say, Sunshine."_

_Shaking his head, Minato set about returning to practicing the sets that his sensei had shown him the day before._

_"Hey!" the red-head called out just as Minato reached the most complicated point of the exercise. "The day that you make Hokage is the day that I pledge my undying love to you!"_

_Minato tripped over his own feet and ate dirt._

His feet stilled at a street corner and he smiled faintly at the memory. Back then he'd been absolutely horrified at that declaration. He'd thought that Kushina was a boy, and he didn't want another boy declaring love to him.

_Kushina!_ He perked up, glanced around to orient himself, and took off running. _I've got to tell her about this!_

The world around him blurred as he built up speed. Even without his _Hiraishin_ he was fast. Speed and precision had always been part of his personal fighting style. He'd always been fast.

A ridiculously short time later he was at her apartment door and knocking. She didn't immediately answer and he worried that she might be out of the village on a mission. He was considering slipping outside and scrambling up the wall to peek into her window to check, when the door finally did open to reveal a disheveled Kushina, glaring daggers, and dressed for bed.

"Namikaze Minato, it is almost two in the morning; this had better be a life-and-death emergency."

Her grumpy attitude did nothing to dampen his soaring spirits. "No, no emergency." He leaned in slightly. "Guess what."

She stared at him for a long moment. "I'm going back to bed. I'll guess in the morning."

The door started to close and Minato wedged his foot into the door jamb to keep from getting locked out. "Wait, wait, wait! Come on, just one guess, please!"

"What the hell's wrong with you?" she scowled. She leaned in and sniffed at him suspiciously. "No booze, no funny smoke…"

"I'm fine!" Minato laughed. "I'm sorry it's so late, but I was thinking and lost track of time."

Kushina squinted at him for a little while longer before sighing and opening the door wide for him. "Come in you dork, you look like a crazy person standing out in the hall this late."

"Okay," he replied happily and followed her inside. "So are you going to guess?"

"Fine," she groaned and hopped onto her little kitchenette counter. "What would have you up this late thinking?" She swung her legs back and forth thoughtfully. "And it has to be something good—you're like a little kid on a sugar rush." Her fingers combed through her long red hair and she chewed her lip thoughtfully. "The only thing that I can think of is…" She froze and stared at him open-mouthed. "_No way!_"

Minato was grinning like a fool and he did not care. "Sandaime-sama kept me after my mission debriefing today to talk about it."

"When do you start?" she asked in a breathless whisper.

"In one week I'll officially start my apprenticeship under Sandaime-sama, and in about a year he'll retire, and then…"

"And then you become Hokage," she finished for him, awed.

"And then I become Hokage," Minato confirmed.

There was dead silence for a good minute or two, and then she launched herself at him from her countertop seat with an excited whoop. He caught her against his chest and spun her around a few times as they laughed. It was almost like being drunk, he was so giddy. Her laugh was loud, but not obnoxious, and her hair smelled sweet, and she was warm against him—

He kissed her. Her hands were in his hair. It felt like they were falling, and it felt good—

She abruptly froze in his arms. An icy leaden weight settled in his stomach and he slowly pulled back to look at her. There was a flicker of fear in her wide, expressive eyes and his heart twisted.

"I—" _Oh god, what do I say? That I liked it? That it was a mistake?_

Her eyes dropped to the floor and she started to tremble.

"Kushina?" _What's wrong? Why isn't she saying anything? Why won't she look at me? Did she not like it? Did I do it wrong? Does she…does she hate me now?_

She slipped out of his arms with the ease of a practiced kunoichi and she huddled by her window, her back to him. "It's late and I'm tired." Her voice was soft, strained, and subdued. "Go home."

"Kushi—"

"Go home," she repeated firmly.

He hesitated, thought about protesting, but slunk away in the end with his tail between his legs. She said no, and that was it. And so he went home like a good little boy.

He sighed and curled up into a miserable ball on his bed. _I'm so, so stupid…_

* * *

It was around noon when Minato's solitude was interrupted. His beloved teacher bounced in through the window with a loud laugh and a bright smile. Apparently Sandaime-sama had shared the good news with him.

"There's my future Hokage!" Jiraiya crowed. Then he frowned. "What the hell are you doing still in bed?"

"I didn't feel like getting up," Minato groaned, turning into his pillow.

"Why?" Jiraiya wondered. "Come on! Get up, we need to celebrate!"

"Go celebrate for the both of us."

The bed sank as the Sannin made himself comfortable. "What's wrong?"

"I'm an idiot," Minato mumbled.

"Details, boy. Throw me a bone here."

"I went to see Kushina late last night," he hesitantly admitted. "And I…"

"You what?"

Minato cringed and burrowed deeper under his blankets.

"You're an adult, Minato!" Jiraiya scolded. "Get out of there and talk to me like a man."

Very reluctantly Minato sat up and partly wormed his way out of the cocoon of blankets. "I…I kissed her—"

"Yes!"

"—and she freaked out and sent me away."

"…Damn." Jiraiya patted his shoulder. "No wonder you didn't want to get up."

"Gee thanks," Minato grumbled, slumping his shoulders.

The white-haired man shook his head. "Damn! I could've sworn that she had a thing for you, too."

"Yeah," Minato sighed. "I thought that she might like me, too; but then she froze up…"

"Wait, did she kiss you back at all?"

"Yes," Minato nodded. "But then it was like her mind caught up with what she was doing and…" He looked down at his rumpled sheets and felt ill. "And she looked scared."

Jiraiya frowned deeply. "Did she give you a reason when she sent you away? She doesn't like you like that, she has a boyfriend, she likes someone else…?"

"She just said that she was tired and sent me home."

"Huh." The Sannin tapped his fingers in an odd pattern on his knee. "Without a reason, I can only speculate that your sudden and dramatic revelation of your feelings for her caught her off-guard and she panicked. Or that kiss brought up some bad memories."

"Bad memories?" Minato scowled. "Like someone did something to her—"

He was stilled by an upraised hand. "Ask her and find out."

"Today?" Minato shivered.

"It doesn't have to be today, but soon."

"Alright." Minato slumped wearily. "I…I suppose I'll track her down tomorrow."

"That's the spirit!" His old sensei gave him a hearty slap on the back. "You gotta fight for this! She's worth it, right?"

The memory of the kiss drifted back to the forefront of his mind and he felt warm. "Yes, yes she is."


	10. Tomboy's Confession

**Chapter 10: **_Tomboy's Confession_

Kushina lashed out at the training post like it had insulted her. Her fists and feet slammed into the wood with noisy thumps. It was starting to hurt, but she kept at it. So long as she was training she didn't have to face the world…or _him_.

_Why?_ She redoubled her pace. _Why did he do that? And why did it have to feel so damn good?_

With a frustrated snarl she collapsed at the base of the post and rested her sweaty forehead against the rough wood.

_Why did he have to kiss me like that? Why does he have to always be so nice, and good, and good-looking? Why does he have to be…him?_

"Why, why, why?"

"Why what?"

Kushina yelped, tried to get up, but her sore legs failed her and she fell over backwards onto the dirt. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

Minato flinched and looked very much like a kicked puppy up on his perch on top of a nearby training post. "Sorry."

She swallowed hard and sat up to pick at the sparse grass on the grounds. "Don't look at me like that," she muttered. "Come here to train?"

"I was thinking about it," he replied awkwardly.

"I'll leave then," she sighed and staggered to her feet. "I was done anyway."

"Wait!" In a flash he was at her side. "Wait! I-I want to talk to you."

She thought about just ditching him, but against her better judgment… "Okay." She leaned back against the post and folded her arms over her chest. "Talk."

"Um…" He took a minute to collect himself, and she almost wanted to laugh to see Konoha's Yellow Flash so nervous over just talking to her. "About…about last night—"

"Don't worry about it. It's already forgotten," she lied.

He blinked. "I… Before you forget entirely, I was hoping to find out just what I did that upset you so much. I don't want to do it ever again." He looked so earnest and apologetic that she had to look away from him.

"You didn't do anything wrong," she mumbled and stared down at the dirt around her sandals.

"But…you were scared," he persisted. "Why?"

"You just surprised me is all," she shrugged. "I knew you were excited about being the next Hokage and all, but excited enough to kiss—" Her voice broke and she had to stop.

Ever since that kiss she'd feared that she'd crossed the point of no return with him; the invisible point that she'd been so wary of where friendship stopped being enough. She'd been so careful, put up a thick wall of friendship… But had he slipped around all that and run off with her heart anyway?

It certainly seemed that way. The damn kiss had set loose a swarm of butterflies in her middle and every time she thought of him—which was much too often—they'd act up. In the shower that morning she found herself fantasizing about the kiss, and kissing him again (and again), and giggling like a little girl. And now that he was right in front her she couldn't talk to him, couldn't even look at him for fear that she'd jump him, break down on him, or both.

"Kushina?"

She snapped her head up to find that he was even closer, barely one foot away. Rumors said that Konoha's Yellow Flash had eyes that were cold as ice and able to look into your soul. Kushina agreed about the looking into your soul part, but his eyes were never cold, not when he looked at her. Her knees felt like jelly and the damned butterflies were freaking out in her guts.

"What's wrong?"

"Let's just stay friends," she whispered hoarsely, desperately.

His eyebrows went up. "You're open to more than that?"

"That's not what I said," she gulped, her face starting to burn.

"But are you?" He sounded…hopeful.

She shook her head. "It won't work out. I'm not dateable material. Not…not for a future Hokage anyway."

"What?"

"Just…" She shook her head and tried to slip around him, but he put his hand on the post, blocking her escape with his arm.

"Please," he begged. "I just… I want to understand why…"

"Why what?"

His free hand slid under her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. "Why you think that?"

_God, why does he have to be so disgustingly romantic now, of all times?!_ "You thought I was a boy," was all she could manage.

He blinked. "That was…years ago. I'd have to be blind and an idiot to make that mistake now."

"Well, you _are_ an idiot," she jabbed, more out of reflex than anything. She swallowed hard. "What changed?" she whispered. "What makes me stand out from the dozens of little fan-girls that drool over you?"

"For one, you're not one of the fan-girls," he shuddered. "And for another, you're pretty smart, and you're a good fighter, and you make me laugh, and you're my friend, and you don't inflate my ego or hang out with me because I'm so famous, and…" As he rambled on he started to blush. "And you're…very, very pretty." Now he was really blushing and his eyes nervously darted away from her face. "And…I really liked kissing you," he finished, almost whispering.

Kushina felt her heart stop for a good minute. "How many girls have you kissed?"

"One," he replied, shifting anxiously. "You."

She tried her best to melt into the training post that she was practically pinned against. "Just me?"

"Well," he scratched at the back of his head, "Akanami Chihiro would disagree, but _I_ don't count it."

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow that demanded an answer.

"When I was eleven, she tried and fell on me in class. She barely got my mouth, it lasted about two seconds, and I didn't enjoy it at all." He shivered. "She wouldn't stop talking about it or the rest of the year."

Kushina couldn't help but laugh.

"Huh," Minato grumbled. "What about you? How many guys have you kissed?"

"Barring kisses that were part of missions—which were always with pervy old creeps or pervy young creeps—just one guy." She studied the stitching on his vest before glancing up at his tense expression. "Just you."

Minato's face lit up with a blinding smile. But his grin faded as he voiced a question. "Haven't any other boys tried to kiss you?"

"Outside of missions? Sure," she shrugged. "I kindly introduced my knee to their groins."

He cringed and paled a little. "Why?"

"I didn't really know any of them well, and it was obvious that they just saw a decently pretty girl with boobs and wanted to try and score."

"Oh." He moved a tad bit closer and kept opening his mouth like he was going to ask her something, but no words came out.

She sighed, "Just ask."

"I…can I kiss you again…please?"

She wanted to tell him no, but her mouth refused to work. The first kiss had been a horrible, wonderful mistake. A second kiss would doom her, she just knew it. So she just stared mutely at the dirt under her feet.

"…I guess that's a no." There was to sound of scuffing sandals and she looked up to see his retreating back. "I've got to go. I'll see you around."

As a young girl she'd been impulsive. She said what she thought without really thinking about it and always acted on her first instinct. Time, maturity, and hard experience had taught her caution and how to think things through…some of the time.

Minato barely got five steps away before she tackled him from behind, wrapping her arms around his middle and burying her face into his back.

"Kushina—"

"When we were genin I got this horrible crush on you!" she blurted out. "I hated every second of it, because it was such a girly thing—to have a crush on a boy. And girls were all sissies and pushovers and weaklings and I didn't want to be like that at all. It was weird and it freaked me out so I ended up being extra nasty to you and I'm sorry!"

There was a long pause. "You had a crush on me…when we were _genin_?!"

"Yeah," she mumbled.

Another pause. "Really?"

"Really," she grumbled.

"But…you _hated_ me."

"I told you that I didn't hate you, you just annoyed me…because you were so awesome…and cute."

He let out a startled chuckle and twisted around so that she was hugging his chest instead of his back and returned the embrace. "Just cute?" he muttered as if insulted. "Not handsome?"

"Yeah," she grinned. "I suppose you have your handsome moments, but mostly you're just cute."

"Hmph," he snorted into her hair and she shivered at the sensation. "Well, speaking of when we were genin, I remember this one time that you were making fun of my ambitions, and you promised to do something if I achieved them."

Kushina's mind raced as she tried to recall the incident that he was referring to. Their genin days were a long time ago and while some events stood out clear in her mind (most notably their parting when she punched him) most were just fuzzy snapshots and snippets of conversations. This particular event seemed to be one of the vaguer ones in her mind.

"Refresh my memory, please."

"You swore that the day that I made Hokage you would pledge your undying love to me," he cheerfully informed her.

"And then you fell on your face," she snickered as the event in question finally snapped into focus for her. _That was hilarious!—oh wait…_

"That was back when I thought you were a boy," he huffed. "The idea of a boy proclaiming love to me was…not appealing."

She couldn't help but laugh at that idea. "Hey, it could happen," she snickered. "I'm sure that you have a few male fans out there, Yellow Flash!"

"Please don't say things like that!" he grumbled. Minato eased her away from his chest so that he could look at her face. "Now that I'm going to be the next Hokage, what are you going to do?"

Kushina swallowed hard and slipped out of his arms to put some space between them. Although his tone was light and joking, she knew that he was asking a serious question and he wanted a serious answer. Unconsciously she mirrored her posture from the night before: her back to him and her arms hugging herself as if she were cold.

"I'm not pledging you anything, Namikaze—"

She didn't have to face him to "see" the hope drain out of him. The justifications that she armored herself with suddenly felt thin and her heart ached. She was horribly torn until one side abruptly gave out.

"—because you're not Hokage yet, dork. You're just in-training to be Hokage. The day that you get that silly Hokage hat for keeps is the day that you hear any sort of pledge from me." She glanced over her shoulder to watch Minato in the process of un-wilting and smiled faintly. "In the meantime though…I _suppose_ I can let you kiss me."

Minato's smile briefly outshone the sun.


	11. Figuring It Out

**Chapter 11: **_Figuring It Out_

Minato felt good. Not giddy, or light-headed, or ecstatic, or overjoyed—just good. And no matter what happened today, he doubted that it would kill his good mood.

"Hey, hey, look at that smile!" Jiraiya seemed to drop out of the sky to match pace with him. "You make up with her already? The sun's barely up!" The older man flashed him a lecherous grin. "Unless you had a little late-night rendezvous…"

"Jiraiya-sensei!" Minato sputtered, reddening. "I did no such thing."

"Well what happened?'

"I caught her at the training grounds yesterday afternoon when I went out to clear my head. We talked and worked some things out and everything's fine." He shoved a hand in his pocket, aiming for a casual stance. "That's it."

"That's it, huh?" Jiraiya sighed and tilted his head back to gaze at the scraps of cloud overhead. "That's great news. But it would've been nice if you ran with it and saw how far you could get."

Minato stumbled. "Jiraiya-sensei?"

"No worries, though." The Sannin cheerfully patted his student's shoulder. "Play your cards right and you'll ditch your virginity in no time."

"Jiraiya-sensei?!"

"And when that time comes, don't be shy about asking me for advice. I know a few moves that'll have her screaming your name in no time!"

"_Jiraiya-sensei!_"

"But then again, seeing as it's you, it'll be at least a decade until you get through all the bases with her."

"_Sensei!_ Can we please talk about something else?"

"Hm?" Jiraiya glanced down at his red-faced former student. "Oh fine," he pouted. "Any particular plans for when Sarutobi-sensei hands you his hat?"

"A few," Minato shrugged as his hot face started to cool off. "I'd like to find a way to encourage the Hyuuga to discard the practice of the Caged Bird Seal, or modify the seal so that it isn't so…divisive."

"Very ambitious," Jiraiya mused. "That'll eat up a few years…"

"I know," Minato nodded. "But I can be patient; I have time."

"True enough," the Sannin agreed. "You're young. You have plenty of years to spend."

"And I'd like to—"

"Minato-kun!"

The blonde choked and froze. _No, no, no, no—_

A bleached blonde woman bounced right up to him and latched onto his arm. Her hair was curled and stiff with hairspray and she had overdone it on the make-up. She was wearing a tight blue dress that was very short and revealingly cut. Green eyes sparkled up at him and her flirty giggle made him shudder.

"Minato-kun, it's been so long since I've seen you!"

"Chihiro-san," he gulped. "I—"

"You can call me 'Chihiro-chan'," she giggled. "We've known each other since the Academy."

"Chihiro-san," he tried again, "could you please—"

"_Minato-kun!_" she whined and pouted childishly, cuddling closer to him. "The '-san' suffix is so formal! We're good friends; you don't need to use it."

"Er…" Minato furtively glanced over at Jiraiya for help—only to spot the Sannin across the street trying to flirt with a pair of young brunettes. _Damn it…_

"Minato-kun," Chihiro purred, making him cringe. "Do you like my dress? I just bought it last week."

"Chihiro-san, please let go of my arm," he pleaded.

"Sorry," she giggled and loosened her grip, but she didn't let go. "We should catch up with each other! My uncle runs a nice little café on the west side of the village, so we can get a nice cheap lunch."

"I-I can't," he protested, desperately grasping for some excuse. "I have plans."

"What kind of plans?" She pouted. "It's not ninja training, is it? Couldn't you reschedule that? Or…maybe I could come watch and then we could do something afterwards!"

"No, I, uh…I…" _Think of something, think!_ "I…I have a date!"

Chihiro started and stared at him for a moment before recovering her cheerful, clingy disposition. "Oh, I'm sure that your friend wouldn't mind pushing back your appointment by an hour or two." Her hand drifted up to his chest and started tracing abstract patterns on his flak vest.

"Oh, she'd mind," Minato hurriedly assured the woman.

"She?" There was a slight sneer in Chihiro's voice.

"Yes." Her green eyes were like jade daggers trying to pierce through him and he swallowed hard. "I…I have a date with my girlfriend."

Chihiro looked almost like she'd been physically hit. "Your girlfriend?" she repeated blankly.

"Yeah," he grinned.

It was strange—just referring to Kushina as his girlfriend gave him a little rush and revived his earlier good mood. He didn't have to force his grin, it just sort of spread over his face. For a moment he even forgot that Chihiro was still hanging on his arm as he basked in the knowledge that he – Namikaze Minato – had a girlfriend. And she wasn't just any girl, she was Uzumaki Kushina—the girl who had once broken his nose. Somehow that made it even better.

"I…see," Chihiro finally managed to mutter, breaking Minato out of his little grinning daze. "Well…enjoy your…_date_." After choking out that final sentence, she finally let go of his arm and hurried off down the street.

Minato blinked. "Wow. Maybe I should've _lied_ about having a girlfriend before…"

Then he felt a little guilty. Lying on a mission was one thing, but lying to a civilian (in this particular case: one who'd made some effort to be a ninja, she'd just not made the cut) was not something he should resort to. There had to be some way to let a girl know that he wasn't interested and let her down gently…

And then it hit him that he hadn't exactly set up a date with Kushina. Aside from a few shy kisses and a little cuddling, the only thing they'd done the previous day was to confirm their interest in each other and their mutual desire to date. No other plans for the future had been set.

_I…have no idea what I'm doing._ A little spark of panic started to worm its way into his chest. _What…what do I do now?_

He glanced across the street to see that Jiraiya was still over there, trying to weasel a date out of the brunette pair.

_Maybe Sandaime-sama can help me…_

* * *

It was quite thoroughly noon and Kushina still hadn't rolled out of bed yet. She wasn't an early riser, but she rarely stayed in bed so late, unless she was ill or hung-over—and right now she was neither. Currently, she was being incredibly lazy and basking in the heady realization that she was now dating Namikaze Minato—the man that she wished for, but never dared dream that she'd ever get.

She really ought to get up, and shower, and get on with her day, but she couldn't work up the necessary willpower to move. It was like a dream, and a part of her feared that if she got up the dream would be over and gone like it never happened. So she continued to doze in her bed, staring blankly at her off-white ceiling while she replayed scraps of the previous afternoon…

_"So are you just going to stand there and grin at me all day or what?" she asked curiously_

_Minato blinked, confused. "Uh…?"_

_Swallowing a rush of nerves, she managed a shy smile. "I thought that you wanted to kiss me again."_

_"Y-yeah." He swallowed hard and hesitantly closed the gap between them and she once again found herself with her back pressed against the worn training post. "I do."_

_Kushina was sure that her heart was going to pound its way out of her chest as he stared down at her with his intense blue eyes. He raised a hand to cup her cheek, but hesitated and then dropped it. Minato shifted anxiously and looked conflicted, and for a long minute Kushina feared that he was having second thoughts._

_"I-I don't know where I should put my hands!" he blurted out in a panic._

_"You dork!" she laughed and threw her arms around his neck. "If your hands go somewhere I don't want them, I'll let you know!"_

_"Okay," he gulped, briefly flashing her a nervous half-smile._

_His hand came up to her cheek again and actually made contact this time. The touch sent shivers racing all through her and had she not been propped up against the post she felt she felt she would've collapsed to the ground. Even though he was more confident this time, he still hesitated and impulsively she leaned in the last few inches and lightly brushed her lips against his. He jerked back with a startled laugh, and she giggled at him. Then it got quiet again and he studied her thoughtfully for a moment, gnawing at his lip briefly, before he leaned in again and pressed a firmer kiss to her mouth. It was a fairly innocent kiss (no tongue or anything), but still her knees turned to jelly and—_

"Uzumaki!" There was a noisy thud on her apartment door. "What the hell?!"

With a growl she rolled out of bed, tripped on the sheets, and stumbled over to answer the call. She swung the door open to find Daichi, Arata, ad Hachiro standing there. The trio was very surprised to see her still dressed for bed and un-showered.

"What the hell?!" Arata sputtered.

"Are you sick?" Hachiro asked worriedly.

"No, I'm fine," she sighed and scrubbed at her eyes. "What's up?"

There was a pause.

"We had plans for today," Daichi answered slowly, "remember?"

Kushina blinked, then smacked her forehead. "Crap, I completely forgot! Give me fifteen minutes."

She darted to her bathroom and left her front door open so that the three men could hang out inside while she got ready.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Hachiro called through the door. "It's not like you to forget plans or sleep in so late."

"Honestly I'm fine!" she shouted over the water. "Fantastic even!"

"I'm not sure that I believe you," Hachiro shot back. "I've known you ever since you were seven years old. You only lay around past ten if you're sick or something's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong!" she couldn't help but laugh. _Everything feels right!_

She ran through her cleansing routine at double speed. Hair shampooed and conditioned, face washed, and body washed, she hopped out of the shower and brushed her teeth while pulling on her bathrobe. After her mouth felt fresh and clean, she wrung as much water out of her long hair as she could, brushed it out, and started to braid it. There was just no way that her hairdryer would be able to get her hair dry enough in the five minutes she had left to bother with it.

"Why hello there, Blondie!" she heard Arata call cheerfully from the other room. "Fancy seeing you here!"

Kushina frowned and tied off the end of her braid with an elastic band. _What the hell?!_ She tied the belt on her robe and cracked open the bathroom door to see what was going on.

Minato was crouched on her windowsill, glancing nervously at the three other shinobi. "Er…hi?"

"So," Arata bounced over to the window, cheerfully invading Minato's personal space. "What brings you to the den of the rare female Uzumaki, eh?"

"I, uh…want to talk to her?" Minato gulped anxiously.

"Talk, huh?" A light bulb went off over his head and Arata grinned lecherously. "Come here for 'round two' of…_talking_?"

Kushina snarled and hurled her heavy hairbrush at her tattoo-faced comrade. "Quit being perverted you horny bastard!"

"So violent, Uzumaki-chan!" Arata whimpered dramatically and rubbed at his ear, which had been grazed by the brush.

"Serves you right," she huffed and rifled around in her drawers for clean clothes, and then retreated to her bathroom to dress.

Through her closed door she heard Arata ask: "You like it rough, eh?"

"W-what?!" Minato choked.

"Arata-baka!" Kushina roared and slammed out of her bathroom still yanking up the zipper of her shirt. "One more comment like that and I'm going to give you a black eye!"

"Touchy, touchy!" Arata laughed. "I must be getting close!"

Kushina growled at him and waved her fist threateningly towards him.

"Enough man," Daichi snorted.

"Keep teasing her and she's going to ditch us," Hachiro warned.

Arata sighed in disappointment, but finally stopped tossing around innuendos.

Kushina grumbled incoherent obscenities while she finished up—donning her weapons, hitae-ate, sandals, and such. Blowing out a noisy breath, she turned to Minato with a smile. "So what's up?"

"Could I talk to you…?" Minato squirmed and glanced at her friends. "Um…alone?"

"Ooo!" Arata cooed teasingly.

"Sure, I'll see you up on the roof," she nodded and he quickly formed a hand seal, translocating in a swirl of leaves. "I'll be right back boys," she smiled ferally at her comrades. "And if I catch any of you eavesdropping, your asses are mine."

She used the same technique as Minato had to pop up on the flat rooftop of her apartment building. But before she completed her disappearing act, she caught a snippet of Arata singing the childish "Kissing in a Tree" song, cheerily inserting her's and Minato's names into the lyrics. Kushina ground her teeth and planned on smacking Arata around after she chatted with Minato.

Arriving on the roof, she sat down across from Minato and smiled nervously. "Sorry about him; he's always an ass. Now what did you want to talk about?"

Minato anxiously ran a hand through his yellow, spiky hair and sighed. "I'm guessing that you already have plans for today."

"Yeah," she giggled and fiddled with the end of her damp braid. "Things have been so crazy the last few days that I actually forgot about it." She swallowed and felt the butterflies fluttering in her stomach. "Did you want to do something?"

"I was hoping…" He shrugged and sheepishly scratched at the back of his head. "How about tomorrow?"

She frantically mentally reviewed her schedule, double and triple-checking it to make sure that she wasn't forgetting anything this time. "Yeah, I'm free."

"You want to get lunch, or something?" he asked hopefully.

"Sure," she grinned broadly. Then, on a whim, she hopped onto his lap and hugged his neck. "Oh, this is so weird!" she giggled, giddy.

"Yeah," he chuckled and loosely wrapped his arms around her waist. "Normally I'm eating by myself and you just show up."

"Good times," she laughed.

"Hm," he smiled into her hair.

"You know," she mumbled and snuggled up against his chest. "I didn't want to wake up this morning because I was afraid that yesterday was a dream."

"That's silly," he replied. "If you didn't get up, then we wouldn't be able to hang out."

"True," she agreed. "It just seemed so unreal, though…"

"What's unreal is you," he countered.

She frowned up at him. "Oh?"

"You have no problem rushing headlong into battle or trash-talking a man twice your size in a bar, yet you don't seem to believe yourself worth my notice." He raised an eyebrow at her. "That's just ridiculous."

Kushina blushed and ducked her head. "Whatever."

"Hey, you two done up there yet?" Arata obnoxiously shouted up towards them.

She slipped off Minato's lap and leaned over the roof's edge. "I'll be down in a minute! So," she looked over her shoulder at her boyfriend, "I'll drop by your apartment tomorrow around noon?"

"Yeah," he smiled. "I'll see you then."

"Excellent," Kushina cheered. "Now if you'll excuse me, there's an ass that needs kicking!"

Minato chuckled as Kushina dropped down the side of her building to wrangle her old Uzu comrades back into line. He was glad that he'd come to talk to her, and even more glad to have arraged a real date with her. Things really felt like they were falling into place. Not only was he well on his way to making Hokage, he now had himself a real girlfriend.

He grinned and launched himself off the roof towards the Hokage Tower.

_I'm glad that I talked with Sandaime-sama…_

When he dropped in on the aging Hokage earlier after his nerve-wracking encounter with Chihiro, he'd felt so lost. The old man had calmly sat him down, listened to the whole story, and then carefully mulled over the problem. Then he'd puffed on his pipe and smiled.

_"Relax, Minato,"_ he'd chuckled kindly. _"Do only what you both feel comfortable doing and take things one step at a time. You and Kushina are both clever people; you'll figure it out just fine!"_


	12. Yondaime Sama

**Chapter 12: **_Yondaime-sama_

Kushina had the distinct sensation of being a fish out of water as she aimlessly wandered around the little clothing shop. This particular shop specialized in formal-wear, especially kimonos. She really _hated_ kimonos.

_Why do these things have to be so damn expensive? And so complicated? And come in so many colors and patterns?_

Her head was swimming with prices and colors and designs and—

"I so don't belong in here," she muttered and massaged her temples.

"Then why are you in here?"

She glanced up and found Nara Yoshino, Shikaku's girlfriend-turned-wife of just over a year looking back at her, vaguely amused. "Oh…hi. I'm, uh…shopping."

"Kimono shopping? _You_?" Yoshino raised a dark eyebrow. "…Why?"

"Well, there's going to be that big celebration in a few weeks and…" Kushina shifted anxiously. _This is __**so**__ embarrassing…_

"And you want to wear a kimono to that?" Yoshino folded her arms over her chest. "You know your kunoichi gear is perfectly acceptable, or even just a yukata."

"I know!" Kushina huffed and scowled off to the side at a particularly gaudy collection of fabrics.

Now both of Yoshino's eyebrows went up. "You actually want to dress up?"

Kushina scowled. "Not really."

"So…" Her dark eyes lit up. "You want to look extra special for someone, eh?"

"No!" was her immediate response. Then she reconsidered. "…Well, maybe."

"I can help," Yoshino smiled. At Kushina's wary look, she chuckled. "Relax! Be glad that I'm not Inoichi's wife. She'd have you all in floral prints and spend hours agonizing over your 'season' and such."

The red-head paled and shuddered. "Ew."

"So let's get this part over with," Yoshino invited.

"This part?" Kushina muttered.

"Well a kimono is only part of fixing yourself up," the other woman grinned. "There's the rest of your look too: hair, make-up, maybe a little jewelry…"

Kushina wrinkled her nose. "Right." _I was going to worry about that stuff later._

"But first things first," Yoshino mumbled and started poking through the racks. "Find the dress…"

_This is gonna suck…_

_But it should be worth it…I hope._

* * *

_I am awesome!_

Kushina could feel the corners of her mouth twitching as she smothered back a smile. Yoshino had been a great help in locating a good kimono—a deep forest green number with leaf outlines embroidered in gold thread and a black obi and under-layers. And then the dark-haired woman had persuaded her to get her hair and make-up done with Inoichi's young wife. That had been a bit of a struggle, the bubbly blonde had wanted to do some very ambitious things, things Kushina didn't really want. In the end, things worked out just fine.

_I think he's drooling!_ she cackled to herself as she eyed Minato from across the room.

The Hokage Manor, normally a private residence for the Hokage and his family only, had been transformed into a celebration of the new Hokage. The large formal dining room now housed a huge buffet table, provided by the Akimichi clan of course. The rest of the rooms that were open for the party were draped with streamers, little red paper lanterns decorated with the kanji for fire, and little notes wishing well the new Hokage's reign.

The guest list was something of a who's-who of the Konoha elite. There were high-ranking members of every ninja clan in the village as well as numerous important civilian officials and friends of the newly-minted ninja leader. Add to it a number of party-crashers and most of the ninja in ANBU and it was a packed house.

It was well into the evening now. Everyone was on a bit of a high from the festivities that went on earlier in the day. And of course from Minato's official coronation and wildly successful acceptance speech, too. The plentiful sake also helped boost the mood.

Kushina rested her hip against the buffet table by the giant punch bowl and pretended to be fascinated by her drink. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Minato. He was surrounded by a small crowd of young women, all done up in their finest, trying desperately to catch the eye of the new Yondaime—and Minato just stood there and stared over at her like they were the only two people in the room.

A wonderful shiver vibrated down her spine and despite her stubborn attempt at a cool composure, she blushed.

_All that shopping was so worth it,_ she mentally squealed. _And the make-up and the hair… Hehehe!_

_I can't wait for this party to be over!_

* * *

Minato's brain had short-circuited. He could do nothing but stand there and stare at her. He heard nothing, he sensed nothing, he saw nothing but her.

_Wow._

And then his brain rebooted with a single idea in mind: pin her to the wall and kiss her senseless. It seemed like a very good idea to him; it certainly sounded like a lot of fun. He almost did it.

But then some girl tugged insistently on his arm and distracted him.

"Hokage-sama!" she whined and pouted in what she probably thought was a cute manner. "I asked you what you thought of my new dress!"

"Ah…" He blinked and wondered just when _five_ girls had clustered around him; last he knew there had only been _two_ pestering him. "It's nice," he commented vaguely. "Could you ladies excuse me for a minute? Thanks!" And he was off before they could respond.

"It's just so awful to be popular, isn't it?" Jiraiya chuckled as Minato took shelter out in the hallway with him. The older ninja had a drink in his hand and Minato could tell that his former teacher had already enjoyed several others.

"Feel free to go hit on them, sensei; I'm not interested," Minato huffed.

Jiraiya ignored him and peered back into the dining room. "My, my Kushina certainly looks nice tonight! What a kimono!" He flashed his old student a lecherous grin. "That'll be a lot of fun to take off, eh?"

"J-Jiraiya-sensei!" Minato choked.

He and Kushina had been together almost one year exactly. Things had worked out amazingly well. His only real complaint is that sometimes they just didn't seem to have the time together that they wanted. But that was the downside to the ninja lifestyle—odd working hours that made it practically impossible to make any long-term plans. That, and the high likelihood of early death; that was a problem, too.

But, hectic schedules aside, things were fantastic. Whenever they were together, even if it was just for half an hour, it was great. There was usually a good dose of cuddling, walks in the park or runs through the trees or a meal at a restaurant, and always a good amount of kissing. They would talk about the most random things; she would tell him stories and he would ramble on about jutsus.

_How did I ever get along without her?_ he wondered idly as he leaned against the wall near his mildly intoxicated teacher.

_What would I do if she didn't return my feelings?_ That thought was simply too terrible to contemplate any further and he immediately pushed it from his mind. She adored him. She had to.

_"The day that you make Hokage is the day that I pledge my undying love to you!"_ she'd said. _"__The day that you get that silly Hokage hat for keeps is the day that you hear any sort of pledge from me,"_ she'd said. And she would keep her word. All the hugs and touches and kisses and warm, cuddly moments of the past year told him that she'd keep her word. Although she'd never said the words _"I love you"_ to him, not even when he'd said them to her, she would say it tonight.

_I can't wait,_ he grinned faintly, staring off into space. _I don't care if she says it in front of everyone or when we're alone… I just want to hear it._

Closing his eyes, he slipped a hand into his pants pocket and fingered the small, velvety bag that was tucked in there. It was his late mother's ring. A fairly plain gold band with a small emerald in it. It had been the best that his father could afford; his family had never had much money. But it would be perfect for Kushina, she hated gaudy jewelry (well, jewelry in generally actually).

He wasn't sure why he'd started to carry the ring around with him. It was too soon to ask her. But he _would_ ask her. One day he was going to marry her…

"What's that silly grin for?"

Minato opened his eyes to find Kushina standing right in front of him…and his brain seized up again.

Her long, fiery red hair was coiled up on top of her head and held in place with a pair of black hair sticks, revealing more of her smooth, pale neck than usual. She'd swapped out her usual plain barrette for a polished metal one with leaf patterns engraved on it. She was actually wearing make-up—a little bit of mascara and eye shadow with lip gloss and maybe a hint of blush on her cheeks. The green kimono that she wore complimented her in every way.

He thought that she'd looked great from across the room—up close she looked even better, if that was possible. Now he _really_ wanted to kiss her. And she was so close, he could just—

"Hey!" Kushina hissed and whirled around to smack at Jiraiya's hand. "Touch my ass again and I'll cut that hand off!"

"Jiraiya-sensei!" Minato sputtered. _She's __**my**__ girlfriend!_

"It wasn' me!" Jiraiya frowned, flexing his smacked hand.

"Hi-i-i!" a very drunk voice slurred.

Kushina turned to the other side…and sighed. "Arata-baka, you pervy bastard! You try to cop a feel again and they'll be dragging your busted ass out of here!"

"Aw c'mon!" the man giggled, rubbing at the thick black line tattooed over the bridge of his nose. "Ya look hot t'night." He brushed the dirty blonde hair from his eyes, swayed, almost spilled his mostly-filled glass of booze, and turned to fix Minato with a naughty grin. "Blondie-Hokage-sama's gonna git _laid_ to-night!"

"_**You…**_" Kushina growled, her head bowed and a black aura of pure death radiating from her.

Minato was speechless, and an egg probably would've fried on his hot face.

Jiraiya giggled like a five-year-old.

"You've had enough!" Hachiro muttered as he hurried past, catching Arata by his shirt collar and dragging him off as he went. "Bye-bye and congratulations!"

"Remind me to kill him later," Kushina hissed icily. "…With a rusty spoon!"

Minato could only swallow.

"Ugh!" she sighed and rubbed at her temples. "Forget him… That's a nice jacket, by the way."

"Huh?" Minato blinked and glanced down at himself, briefly at a loss as to what she was referring to. "Oh, thanks."

While he'd been fitted for the traditional Hokage robes, Minato doubted that he'd ever wear them much. Instead, for everyday wear, he'd come up with this cross between a jacket and a cloak that he'd wear over his regular jounin attire. It was long and white with short sleeves, a high collar, red flames along the bottom hem, and the kanji for "Yondaime Hokage" embroidered on the back. He probably wouldn't wear the traditional hat much either, but he did have it with him currently from the coronation ceremony earlier in the day.

"It's only got one tie," Jiraiya snickered, leaning in, "so it's really easy to take off…if you catch my drift."

"Can't this conversation stay out of the gutter for more than five seconds at a time?" Kushina complained.

Minato scratched at the back of his head and stared fixedly at the floor while he tried to will his blush away.

Then, before more awkwardness and innuendos could happen, the freshly-retired Sandaime Hokage came up to him with some important officials and distracted him with business. With work to distract him, it was easy to regain his composure and keep himself focused. When they wandered off and he could relax again, he found himself alone. Kushina had slipped off. Minato squeezed at the rim of the red and white, veiled 'Kage hat.

_Later,_ he thought and pushed off the wall to go and see if either if his students were still present at the party. _The party's still going strong. When things wind down…I'll see her._

He smiled at the thought.

* * *

Kushina yawned so hard that her jaw ached. It was almost three in the morning and the party was finally dispersing. The last few hours had been nothing but a bunch of drunks hanging around and a few sour old people who were up way past their bedtimes, so she'd retreated to the spacious back yard of the manor to enjoy the warm night. And enjoy it she did.

The moon was full, the sky was clear and full of stars, and the warm air was choked with winking lightning bugs. She loved these kinds of warm nights; it was one of the best things about living in the Land of Fire. So even though she was getting tired, she didn't mind staying up to sit near the koi pond and watch the flickering insects float through the air.

"This brings back some memories."

"Oh?" she blinked and turned to see Minato materialize out of the night and walk up the path towards her. "Does it?"

"Yeah," he grinned, fingering the rim of the distinctive Hokage hat. "A long time ago, after you beat up a bunch of guys at a bar, and then went out for a run in the woods. You remember?"

She tilted her head thoughtfully until the proper event came to mind. "Oh yeah, when those dorks thought I was a lesbian." She snorted. "It's the fireflies, isn't it?"

"Mm-hm," he nodded, stopping a few feet away from her. "A beautiful woman among the fireflies…like some kind of forest spirit, or something out of a fairy tale."

Kushina laughed. "Is that why you looked at me with that stupid look on your face back then? You thought that I was a forest spirit? _Ha_!"

"Something like that," he chuckled.

"Here," she patted the open space next to her on the stone bench. "Come sit with me."

He came and sat as directed, settling his hat in his lap. The design of the traditional piece of headgear was the same for all 'Kage hats and based on the basic round straw hats commonly worn by farmers. Instead of making the hats from straw, though, they were made from thin strips of lacquered and painted wood that formed a smooth circle that rose to a slight peak in the middle. There was a white veil that hung from the rim—to add to the mystery or something—that only left the face visible when it was worn. And as this particular hat was made for the Hokage, the color scheme was red and white with the kanji for fire painted on the front. Sandaime-sama had always worn it, and it looked strange just sitting in Minato's lap now.

"I have the hat now." Minato flashed her a nervous, expectant smile. "Don't you have something to tell me?"

"Hmm…" She turned away to stare over the koi pond and watch the dance of the fireflies, her hands sweating and clenched inside her voluminous sleeves. She knew what he was waiting to hear. But if she said it, there was no taking it back, no suddenly deciding that she'd made a mistake. Once she said it, there was no going back.

He'd said the words to her before. She'd never said anything back, partly because she intended to make him wait until he'd officially achieved his dream of Hokage. But also partly because…she was afraid. Heck, sometimes she was too afraid to even _think_ the words…

But she felt a squirmy sense of guilt every time she let silence fall between them after he'd say it to her. And even though it had been a joke way, way back then when she'd first made her oath to him, she would follow through. She'd follow through with it because it wasn't a joke anymore.

"Well, you're a workaholic and a jutsu-nerd and so talented that it's ridiculous…" She trailed off for a long minute, letting him squirm just a little bit more before continuing. "…but, for some funny reason, I love you anywa—_eee!_"

Kushina barely finished her sentence before he pounced on her, very nearly knocking her off the bench in his enthusiasm. Gone was the hesitant, nervous man who had to be coaxed at times to kiss her. After one year of breaking him in, he was more than ready to mess around with her any bit of "alone-time" they could muster up. And now that the party was over, and the guests gone, he was finally able to do what she knew he'd wanted to do the moment he'd seen her all dressed up.

"Mmm, I love you, too," he muttered, panting when they finally separated for air. He held her close and stroked her face and just smiled. "I've waited forever to hear you say that."

"I know," she sighed breathlessly. "It was worth it, though, right?"

"Mm-hm," he grinned a little, and then started up again.

She blissfully melted under his touch and responded in kind. At some point he'd managed to pull the sticks from her hair, sending the long red locks spilling over her shoulders and down her back. Clothing got looser and tugged out of place and the temperature seemed to rise. It seemed just like any other time they managed to work in a heated make-out session, but she had the feeling that this time would end up different.

"I don't think this night could get any more amazing," Minato muttered between light, teasing kisses to her neck.

"Really?" Kushina breathed, clinging to the front of his un-zippered flak vest. "I could think of a thing or two else to do."

He froze, then slowly pulled back to look into her eyes. "Oh?"

"Yeah," she grinned and glanced over at the back of the Hokage Manor, just barely visible through the trees in the dim light. "Have you moved in there yet?"

"No, I'll be moved in and Sandaime-sama will be moved out within the week." He swallowed hard. "What did you have in mind?"

She chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment before deciding: _Aw, why the hell not?_ "Take me back to my apartment, and I'll show you."

His mouth worked for a minute, but no words came out. "Are—are you sure?"

"I wouldn't suggest it if I wasn't," she replied, tamping down a few nervous butterflies in the pit of her stomach.

Minato blinked, then managed a nervous, but warm smile. "Alright. Hang on tight!"

There was a flicker of yellow light and they vanished from the well-groomed back yard of the Hokage Manor. The drifting lightning bugs swirled towards the spot they'd vacated for a moment, confused. But when they found no female waiting there for them, they returned to their aimless spiraling, seeking their mates…


	13. You Make Me Sick!

**Chapter 13: **_You Make Me Sick!_

Minato looked out the windows of his office and sighed in contentment. It was a wonderful spring day and so far nothing had happened to ruin it. No threats of war, no diplomatic incidents, no bad missions, no whiny genins complaining about some lousy D-rank missions—nothing.

Well, there was a lot of paperwork to do, but when _wasn't_ there a stack of papers to stamp? Such was the life of the Hokage, the greatest desk-ninja in the whole village. Work consisted of sorting through tons of forms and requests, assigning missions, and endless meetings. It wasn't half as glorious as he'd thought when he'd first developed his ambitions for the post when he'd been a young genin, but he had no regrets.

To even be considered for the position, a ninja had to be one of the best of the best. No one is more respected than the Hokage; no one had half as much power to guide and change the village. As Hokage, he could protect everyone.

That was what he most desired to do, even before he became a genin of Konohagakure no Sato.

"And I will," he mumbled to himself. "I will protect everyone."

"Are you talking to yourself, again?"

Minato turned towards the doorway of his office to see Kushina trudging through it. She looked grumpy and tired and kind of sick. He frowned, worried.

"I was just thinking out loud," he replied. "Are you feeling okay?"

"Not really," she snapped. "Thanks for noticing."

"Er…" He nervously rubbed at the back of his head. "Do you want to see a medic?"

She fixed him with a positively evil look. "No."

"Okay," he hurriedly agreed. "Do you want to go out for lunch?"

"No." She shuddered and looked sicker. "I'm not hungry."

He frowned again and walked over the gently embrace her. "Are you _sure_ you don't want to see a doctor? You haven't been yourself for weeks."

For a good month she'd been sick, off and on. Some days she was fine. But most days she ranged from feeling a bit ill, to not wanting to get out of bed all day. Just when it seemed that she was getting better, she'd have a bad day. He was really getting worried.

"I don't need to see a doctor," she growled. "I'll be fine."

"Alright," he sighed and ran his fingers through her long red hair. "You want to come sit with me?"

She nodded and he gently led her over to his desk where he pulled up a spare chair next to his own. While he quietly sorted through stacks of forms and filled out paperwork, she leaned against his arm and started to doze. In spite of his worry over her mysterious health issues, he found himself smiling in contentment.

Health questions aside, things were going great with them. Barely a month after he'd moved into the Hokage Manor, he'd persuaded her to join him. It had been a fantastic half a year with her, and he was comfortable and secure enough to be seriously plotting ways to propose to her. As soon as she felt better…

"A gift for you, Hokage-sama," a chuunin on administrative duty announced as he stepped into the office, weighed down by an impressive floral arrangement.

Minato sighed in irritation at the sight. It was known within the village, and rumored within the rest of the Land of Fire, that he was with someone. Most people didn't know who exactly it was – they enjoyed their privacy, and he didn't want his enemies targeting her for some violent act of vengeance – but they knew it was serious. He politely turned down every advance any woman made towards him, yet some women, especially daughters of rich families, seemed determined to pursue him anyway.

"Did you try to refuse it?" the young Hokage asked.

"The messenger who delivered it was very insistent," the chuunin muttered. "What should I do with it?"

"Get rid of it!" Kushina coughed. "It reeks."

Minato blinked and leaned forward a bit to sniff at the small bale of flowers. "It doesn't smell that bad…"

"Are you kidding?!" she sputtered and buried her face in his shoulder. "It's making me nauseous. Take it away!"

"Take them down to one of the shinobi lounges and leave them for whoever wants some," Minato instructed. "I'm sure that there are plenty of young ninja who would love to have free flowers for their sweetheart."

The chuunin bowed, as much as he was able, and carried the pile of flora out of the office.

"Is it gone yet?" Kushina mumbled into his shoulder.

"It's gone," he answered, rubbing her back gently. "Are you developing an allergy to flowers?"

"No," she snorted, shifting to get more comfortable. "They just smelled so strong it was giving me a headache…made me feel sick."

"Sure that was a lot of flowers, but they were halfway across the room…"

"So what?" she pouted. "It's not like you wanted them anyway."

"True," he nodded. _But I barely smelled them…_

And the aroma of flowers wasn't the only thing that seemed to aggravate her recently. His morning coffee, which she'd never liked but never complained about before, now drove her from the kitchen. She stopped eating some of her favorite foods, like sushi, complaining that it made her feel nauseated. A few times she'd even thrown up.

_I know you hate doctors and hospitals, but I wish that you'd go._ Swallowing a sigh, he tried to return to his paperwork. _I wish I knew what was wrong… You're scaring me, Kushina._

* * *

_What am I doing here?_

Kushina growled in aggravation as she sat in an exam room and waited for the medic to return. Her back felt sore and no matter how she shifted on the little exam table she couldn't get comfortable. She was really regretting finally giving in to the subtle pressure that Minato had put her under for weeks.

Personally, she didn't see what he was so worried about. She probably just had a lingering virus of some kind, made worse by a few small bouts of food poisoning. And her moodiness was because she felt so awful half the time, and she was due for a period sometime soon—which also explained why half her pants weren't fitting, and the ones that were, were tight.

_This is no big deal,_ she sulked. _Minato, you're such a worry-wart! Hospitals are hell, doctors are evil, and medicine is nasty!_

She'd shrugged off his worried pleas for a while now. But when he asked her to spend some time with Rin, his student who specialized in medicine, she finally cracked. Admittedly she overreacted. She'd snapped very nastily at him, and angrily promised to see a doctor…just to shut him up. And so here she was.

The medic assigned to her case was thankfully a patient one. She managed to pry the wide range of symptoms she'd experienced over the past few weeks and talk her into a blood test. Now she was just waiting for her to come back with the results.

_Nothing's wrong,_ she huffed to herself. _It's a virus. There's no medicine for viruses, only for bacteria. This is stupid. Damn you, Minato! You jerk! I'm fine—_

"Sorry it took so long," the annoyingly cheerful, infinitely patient medic smiled as she came back into the exam room. "I have your results."

"And?" Kushina scowled, impatient.

"It's just as I suspected," the medic woman grinned. "Congratulations!"

"…Congratulations?" Kushina repeated blankly. "For…what?"

"You're pregnant!"


	14. Oh Baby

**Chapter 14: **_Oh Baby…_

_Month 3: April_

Kushina slumped on the couch of the living room, lulling in a numb stupor. The doctor's words still reverberated in her mind, yet they seemed to refuse to sink in. It all made sense, but…_really?!_

_Oh god,_ she moaned. _What am I going to do? …And how am I going to tell him?_

Before she could ponder on this very long, Minato walked in the door. He took one look at her and was at her side in an instant. She knew that she probably didn't look all that hot, but did she really look bad enough for him to radiate so much concern?

"Hey, you okay?" he murmured, looping an arm around her shoulders.

"Ugh," she groaned and sagged against his side. "I went to the doctor today."

He instantly tensed. "What did he say? Is it anything serious?"

"Hmm, I'd say that it could be classified as serious," Kushina sighed and fiddled with the hem of her shirt.

"Oh god," he muttered, sounding rather panicky. "How serious? It-it's not terminal, is it?"

She pulled back and squinted at him, baffled. "Terminal?" she repeated blankly. "What…?" And then she caught on to his line of thinking, and punched him in the shoulder. Hard. "You _idiot_!" she snarled. "I'm not sick with any fatal disease. I'm not going to die!"

"Oh—oh good," he smiled in relief and rubbed tenderly at his sore arm. "So…what is it?"

Kushina folded her arms over her chest and stared sulkily at the nearby coffee table. "I'm pregnant."

"…Huh?"

"You heard me," she grumbled, glancing at his stupidly blank face out of the corner of her eye. "I'm pregnant."

"…With a baby?"

"No, I had an affair with one of the Inuzuka's dogs and I'm going to have _puppies_," she spat sarcastically. "_Of course, I'm pregnant with a baby!_"

"…_Really_?"

"Yes," Kushina sighed, "really."

Minato stared at her, open-mouthed and thoroughly stunned. Then, slowly, she watched it morph into a smile so wide she was surprised that it didn't break his face. And despite her sour mood, she found herself smiling a little in response.

"We're going to have a baby?"

"No, _I'm _going to have a baby, and _you're_ going to sit nearby, sweat, and get your hand broken," she cheerfully corrected him.

He only laughed and pulled her onto his lap to better kiss her.

* * *

_Month 4: May_

Kushina stood outside of the specialty clothing shop and glared at it. She didn't want to go in there. But she barely had any clothes left that fit. And it was only going to get worse in the coming months.

"This sucks!" she sulked as she hesitantly approached the front door. "Stupid baby…making me fat."

She managed to get her hand on the handle, but paused.

_I could try to get by with sweatpants and baggy T-shirts,_ she mused, her free hand tracing her baby potbelly. _But that would only work if I stayed inside the whole time. If I went out in public like that, I'd look like a lazy slob…_

She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully.

_They make maternity pants, right? It's not all just dresses… I'll just get a bunch of outfits with pants. Surely I can find something in here that isn't ugly or a dress._

With fresh resolve, she opened the door and stepped inside to start shopping.

But several frustrated hours later, she ended up leaving with a stack of dresses, and no pants.

* * *

_Month 5: June_

He leaned back in his office chair and sighed. It was a fantastically nice chair; a cushy leather-covered thing that swiveled. Sometimes, when he'd been injured and bored, he'd temporarily taken desk jobs to pass the days, and he remembered how uncomfortable those wooden chairs had been. There were some definite perks to being Hokage.

Minato glanced up at the clock and determined it was as good a time as any to take his lunch break. But before he could leave his office and decide on a place to eat at, Kushina arrived. And she brought lunch with her in the form of bento boxes.

"Hey, I was just about to leave for lunch!" he grinned, gratefully accepting the food.

"Glad I caught you then," she smiled and settled herself in a nearby chair.

As hungry as he was, he had trouble keeping his eyes off her and focusing on his meal. She definitely looked pregnant now and it really brought it home to him that this was real; that this was really going to happen. In a few more months, there would be a baby totally dependent on them. Minato hadn't quite decided if he was more thrilled or terrified by that idea yet.

"I had a doctor's appointment today," she announced.

Minato's next mouthful of rice froze halfway to his face. "Oh?"

"Relax, it was just a regular check-up," she assured him. "Nothing's wrong."

"Oh good," he sighed. "So…how's it going?"

"Very good according to the doctor," she answered. "Things have progressed far enough that he could even tell what the sex is."

He blinked, startled. "They can do that?"

"Of course they can! They've got this machine that's supposed to show you pictures of the baby, but the screen's so blurry I can never really see anything. It's like the worst black and white television set ever." She paused and seemed to reorient her thoughts. "Anyway, do you want to know if it's a boy or a girl?"

Minato thoughtfully weighed his choices. He could stay ignorant and be surprised, but he'd be the only one to not know—Kushina clearly already knew. Or he could find out now and be better prepared…

"Tell me."

"It's a boy," she smiled and rubbed at her rounded stomach.

"A boy…" he murmured in wonderment. _A son… Wow._

Kushina jolted him out of his thoughts before he could get too swept away in the joyful rush of this new knowledge. "Would you have been disappointed if it was going to be a girl?"

"No," he smiled faintly, "I'd be happy with either one. It's just…it makes it easier to imagine the future, you know?"

"Yeah." She glanced down sharply and brought both hands to her belly.

"What is it?" he asked, already half out of his seat. _Please don't let anything be wrong. Please—_

"It's nothing, I just felt him move," she replied.

"Oh." Minato felt rather silly and almost sat back down, but changed his mind and walked around the corner of his desk to kneel beside her chair. "He's moving in there?"

"Yes," she nodded.

Then she took his hand and guided it to a particular spot on her belly. At first he didn't feel anything and he wondered if he'd missed the brief bout of baby activity. But then he felt the faintest fluttering underneath his fingertips and gasped out loud.

"Wow," he breathed.

"Hmm… You're not going to be able to keep your hands off my tummy now, are you?"

He just laughed and snaked his arms around her waist. "Nope!"

* * *

_Month 6: July_

Minato moaned at the insistent poking in his back.

"Mi-na-to," Kushina sing-songed.

"Mmph," he grunted into his pillow.

"Yo, Namikaze!" She jabbed him harder.

"Whut?" he mumbled, trying to work through the sleepy fog in his head.

"I'm hungry."

_Crap,_ he groaned and squinted at the glowing numbers of his alarm clock. "It's two in the morning."

"So?"

"Alright," he sighed and staggered out of bed and yanked on his robe. "What do you want?"

"Strawberries," she decided.

Minato frowned. "But we're out of strawberries."

"So?"

He scrubbed tiredly at his eyes. "Okay, strawberries. Anything else?"

"Some grapes and pineapple would be great," she added. "Oh, and some vanilla frosting."

"Okay," he yawned and started groping around for his wallet. "That's it?"

"Hmm…and some pickles."

Minato shuddered. "Alright," he muttered and stumbled off to find his shoes. "I'll be right back."

After an adventurous trek to one of the few grocery stores open twenty-four hours, and some rather odd purchases, Minato returned to find Kushina waiting for him in the kitchen. She looked quite cozy and cheerful in her robe (which was actually his old robe that she had appropriated for herself) and even though he was tired and wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and sleep, he smiled and sat down across from her. He chuckled at her when she dove into the grocery bags with the enthusiasm of a small child tearing into birthday presents.

"You know, I went through the cabinets, and we're out of ramen," she remarked.

"So?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "We're out of ramen."

"Oh," he sighed and rested his forehead against the table top. _Why?_

* * *

_Month 7: August_

The Hokage Manor had a nursery in it. The Shodai Hokage had built the house after his children were grown and the Nidaime Hokage never had children, but the Sandaime had married and had children while in office. But Kushina had found the pale blue walls of the room too bland and boring, so he was re-painting it.

After weeks of consideration, she'd settled on a darker, stronger shade of blue. That had been easy enough to paint. But now he was tediously painting the swirled leaf symbol of the village in white in a border all around the room…and that was taking a while.

_At least she was satisfied with the old baby furniture,_ he sighed and carefully rubbed at the back of his neck, hoping he didn't get any paint on himself. _I don't have to paint any of that, or replace any of it. I just need to finish painting this room…_

"Has your brain fried from the paint fumes yet?"

He glanced up from his painting to see Kushina peering in through the doorway. "No, I don't think so."

It was a Sunday, and she'd slept in, so she was still wearing the sweatpants and overly-large T-shirt that she'd spent the night in. But in spite of her rumpled appearance, he thought that she looked fantastic. If he didn't have smears of white paint all over his hands he would've gone over and hugged her.

"Good morning," he grinned. "Or should I say, good afternoon?"

"Hmph," she snorted. "I'm living for two people right now; I can sleep in however late I want."

"Of course you can," he smiled. "Did you have a good sleep?"

"Yeah," she yawned widely and did some stretching of her arms and back. "I'm going to make myself a nice late breakfast. You want some?"

"I'm almost done with this bit of wall," he sighed. "I'll be down in a bit, okay?"

"Sure," she smirked and left him to his painting.

But before he could get back to his painting in earnest, he was interrupted again.

"Hokage-sama."

Minato turned to the window to find a small, slight ANBU with a dog mask and spiky silver hair crouched in the window.

"Kakashi, we're in private; you don't have to call me that."

"This was sent to your office," Kakashi informed him, holding out a small package wrapped in brown paper.

"Oh?" He walked over and glanced at the rectangular bundle. "It's from Jiraiya-sensei," he muttered. "Could you open it for me? My hands are all covered in paint."

Kakashi obediently tore away the brown paper to reveal…a book.

"'The Legend of the Gutsy Ninja'." Minato blinked in surprise when he read the author's name. "Jiraiya-sensei wrote a book?!"

* * *

_Month 8: September_

Kushina was feeling rather fat and bored as she drifted through the halls when she stumbled upon the conversation drifting out of the kitchen.

"Come on, don't say that," Minato protested. "I thought it was great!"

_Who's he talking to in there?_

"Each chapter really seems like a page out of your own life, sensei," he continued. "It almost reads like an autobiography."

_Jiraiya's here?_ She tilted her head thoughtfully. _They're talking about that book, eh?_

The white-haired Sannin had sent them his first published work a few weeks back. Minato had been thoroughly excited to see what his sensei had turned out, but Kushina had been skeptical. Really, what sort of book would a pervert like him write? However, she'd read it and been pleasantly surprised.

"Yeah, but…it didn't sell at all," she heard Jiraiya complain. "Maybe I should try and sex up the sequel a little… That's my real forte, after all."

_I'm sure it is,_ she snorted to herself and paused just out of sight of the doorway to see what else was said.

"The way the protagonist refused to give up, even at the end… That was really cool." Minato laughed a little. "He's just like you, sensei."

"Heheh…" the older man chuckled in embarrassment. "You think so?"

"Actually…" Minato began, hesitantly. "I was thinking…"

"Hm?"

"We want to raise our child to be a shinobi like the one in your book!"

Kushina smothered a laugh at Minato's enthusiasm. _You sound like such a dork…_

"That's why we've decided to name him after the main character in your book," Minato informed his old teacher. "What do you think?"

"A-are you sure about this?" the Sannin sputtered in shock. "It's just a random name I came up with while I was eating some ramen—"

Kushina decided to make her entrance then and join the conversation. "Naruto…" She smiled and rested a hand on her round belly. "It's a beautiful name."

When Minato had first suggested the idea to her, she'd laughed it off. But the more she thought about it, the more it grew on her. Now she couldn't think of any other name that would suit their son.

"Kushina…" Jiraiya breathed, startled by her support of the idea. Then he got all embarrassed and rubbed sheepishly at the back of his head. "Hahaha… Hoo boy… If I name him, that makes me his godfather, right? Are you sure you want that on your heads?"

"Absolutely!" Minato declared as Kushina came to stand by his shoulder. "You're a man with true skill… An example we should all follow. I can't think of a finer shinobi than you."

_His personal habits might not be the best, but he's not one of the Sannin for nothing,_ Kushina agreed. _But,_ she silently vowed, still smiling sweetly, _if you pervert our son, I will kick your ass!_

* * *

_Month 9: October_

Minato glanced out his office window at the Hokage Monument and grinned. The construction of his likeness had just been completed and they were taking down the scaffolding from the face of the cliff. The giant stone head really didn't look much like him, but with his messy hairstyle, he hadn't had high hopes for the accuracy of it.

Still, he was up there beside the Sandaime and the Nidaime and the Shodai. That made his position as Hokage all the more real, somehow. Now it was set in stone. He was the Yondaime, and it was pretty cool.

But there was one thing that he was looking forward to that easily beat out the thrill of his making it onto the mountain. Naruto was coming soon. Maybe a week or two more, and then he'd make his grand entrance.

It was thrilling, it was terrifying, and it was going to be amazing. Every time he thought about it, he couldn't stop smiling. Kushina was more than ready, too; she was tired of complaining about her back and swollen ankles and never being able to sleep at night because Naruto kept kicking her.

Very soon, he and Kushina would join the ranks of their friends and comrades who had a child. Admittedly they were some of the last to enter parenthood. The only people in their age group and social circle that they were beating were Hiashi and his wife, whose daughter wouldn't be born for nearly two months more. But still…

_This is going to be great!_ he grinned. _And after Naruto comes, I'll ask her to marry me._ Feeling energized by his excitement, he glanced at the wall clock and considered his schedule. _I think I can get away with leaving the office now. The paperwork can wait…_

However, his escape plans were thwarted by the arrival of a bird-masked ANBU operative. The young man dropped from one of the ceiling panels into a kneeling position. The trapdoors in the ceiling were usually only used by chuunin he summoned for a task or important messengers that needed direct and immediate access to him. Judging by the harsh breathing of the kneeling ninja, he guessed this was an important messenger.

"Yes?" he prompted.

"Hokage-sama," the ANBU panted. "News from the Fire Temple."

Minato blinked. "What is it?"

"The Kyuubi has appeared…"


	15. E: The End of the Beginning

**Epilogue: **_The End of the Beginning_

He stood on top of Gamabunta's broad head and stared sightlessly into the night. Off in the distance, he could hear snarls and explosions, and there was an eerie red glow on the horizon that had nothing to do with the sun rising. He needed to be over there. His ninja couldn't stall it for much longer. But…

_Why?_

He'd spent three days straight finding a solution to the walking natural disaster that threatened his home. He'd lived on coffee and soldier pills and spent endless hours bouncing ideas off the retired Sandaime. He'd run through every possibility, every contingency, every_thing_. And the only workable answer made him sick.

_Why does it have to be this way?_

All he could think of was Kushina, laying on that hospital bed, sweaty, exhausted, and so very pale. Of his son, Naruto, so very tiny, and beautiful, and perfect, and crying, cold and alone in that stony room covered in seals. Of what he was about to do; what he _had_ to do. And the fact that he wasn't going to see her or him ever again; never marry her; never see him grow up and find out just what kind of man he'd be.

_Why did this have to happen?_

There was another loud rumble and in the distance he could see a jet of flame flicker briefly over the trees. It wasn't hard to imagine the demon wreaking havoc just over the distant rise. The _Kyuubi no Yoko_, the nine-tailed fox, demon god of fire, and the most powerful of the nine Bijuu—a monster of limitless chakra that – for some unknown reason – wanted to make his home into a smoking crater.

_I wish I knew why, but…_

As the Hokage, he couldn't allow that. He _wouldn't_ allow that. Even though it would cost him his life, he would defeat the demon fox.

_…no matter what…_

Sucking in a deep breath, he steeled his nerves and prepared to advance to the battle. Kushina would love their son for the both of them. And his son would be a hero.

_…I will protect everyone!_

"Gamabunta, let's go!"

* * *

The hospital was a panicked beehive of activity as doctors and nurses moved what patients they could to a more secure location, just in case the raging demon made it to the village's edge. Kushina had no interest in being moved. She was too tired and sore. And she had absolute faith that Minato would prevail and the village would be safe.

He'd spent days on end working with the retired Sandaime, the man they called "the Professor" to find a way to do it. He'd very nearly missed the birth of their son; he'd been working so hard. But he'd come at the last moment and caught the main event and told her that he'd found the solution. He wouldn't look at her when he'd told her, and that worried her a bit, but she had faith in him. He would do what was right, and he would save them all.

A nurse had stopped by earlier to try and evacuate her, but Kushina had waved her off. The nervous young woman had left and never came back. Now Kushina was being to wonder if she should've done that…

_Should I still be bleeding?_ she wondered distantly. _Should I be this tired? I know I just had a baby, but I'm a kunoichi—I'm tough!_

She groped for the call button, but it was just so exhausting to even raise her hand from the bed. She couldn't find it. She tried to sit up to better see and almost blacked out. And no one came.

It reminded her of that one time, years ago, in the winter, when she'd lain bleeding on the snow. Minato had found her in time, then; he'd saved her. But this time…this time she doubted she'd be so lucky. Not with the way it felt so hard to breathe; not with how darkness steadily ate away at the corners of her vision.

_I'm sorry Minato. I should've listened to the nurse and left. They would've noticed that something was wrong, and fixed it. I don't think that I'm going to make it this time…_

_Naruto… I'm sorry, baby… Mommy's got to go away… So you be good for Daddy… Be a good boy…_

_Naruto…_

_Mommy's sorry…_

_So…sorry…_

* * *

_"Hey! Hey, Old Man!"_

_"Yes, what is it?"_

_"Um…do you think that…that my parents…wanted me?"_

_"Of course they did, Naruto. Why wouldn't they?"_

_"I dunno… Um…um…Old Man, do you think that…my parents were good people?"_

_"I'm sure they were. The very best. They had you for a son, after all."_

_"He he, yeah! 'Cause I'm awesome! I'm even gonna be the next Hokage, dattebayo!"_

_"Are you now?"_

_"Yeah, just you watch Old Man. I'm gonna be Hokage, the best one ever!"_

**THE END**


End file.
